You deserve fresh bread

Sliced bread has been a standard part of my weekly shop for many years. It’s not something I ever really questioned. I shop once a week. I eat bread every day. So I need a loaf of bread that lasts the whole week. 800g will get me through the week, at a sensible price. A bakery loaf will cost more, but go stale within three days. Surely it’s a no brainer? Well, a few weeks ago I decided to switch things up and now I don’t think I could go back.

On the face of it, sliced bread makes total sense. You get to skip past using a bread knife and a chopping board. You get perfectly regular slices, far superior in terms of evenness to anything I could achieve by hand. The loaf lives in its neat packaging that helps it stay fresher for longer. Machines have made our lives better, and we should be grateful for the convenience. Just think of how much more productive we can be without having to slice our own bread.

What the sliced bread equation fails to take into account is quality of experience. The sounds of the bread knife cutting through the baguette. The sight of little crumbs excitedly flying off in various directions. The smell that wafts upwards as you cut in. And that’s just the foreplay.

Have you tasted a fresh baguette lately? I mean really taken the time to taste it? I’m not under any illusions that a supermarket bakery loaf was lovingly hand-crafted by artisans trained at the Ecole de Pain Formidable, but in terms of quality it’s head and shoulders (or should that be “bread” and shoulders?) above the Hovises and Warburtons of this world.

There’s a simple test you can do. Poke the bread. Go on, give it a poke. Poke it on the outside, and you’ll get nowhere. The crust is crusty. Poke it on the inside, and it’ll cave in before gently returning to its original shape. Supermarket bread is a totally different structure. Wherever you prod it capitulates immediately, squashing down into a dense homogenous mush.

These small differences matter. If the bread tastes good, then I no longer feel the need to pile on great mounds of ham or cheese. Some days I’ll forgo a filling at all, opting instead to dip in oil, vinegar or whatever sauce I might have left over from last night’s dinner. Less meat, less dairy, less waste.

But what to do about running out of bread mid-week? Well, as the old saying goes, man cannot live by bread alone. Stale bread can be used as croutons for salad (in the summer) or soup (in the winter). For breadless lunches consider heating up some grains or pulses to mix with a few chopped vegetables. Simple and easy. As a last resort, there is always the nuclear option: home baking. With a simple combination of flour, water, and salt, you can have delicious flatbreads on your hands faster than it would take to pop to the shops and back.

In conclusion: Eat bread. Not too much. Mostly handmade.