"The best thing since sliced bread?"... Uhm ...

[kenny]

Below is snipped from here https://breadvillage.com/blogs/breadmeister-talk/why-sliced-bread-is-the-worst-invention-ever

Why Sliced Bread Is the Worst Invention Ever​

The greatest thing ... sliced bread? Really?!
Absolutely not, and we will explain why.

Sliced bread has been around for less than a century. The first automatically sliced commercial loaves were produced in 1928 in Missouri, using a machine invented by a guy from Iowa. The invention caught on, because consumers loved the convenience of sliced bread. But they weren’t told that this “progress” came at a high cost - akin to a deal with the devil - in the shape of big scale introduction of preservatives and additives into formerly pure bread.
The bread’s crust is very important for keeping moisture and flavor inside the bread loaf. Once the crust is cut, both disappear quickly. The bread slicers overcame this inconvenience - you guessed right - by stuffing the bread with preservatives.

How come sliced bread from grocery stores feels moist and doesn't get moldy, even though it’s been sitting on shelves for weeks? The answer is that it’s crammed with preservatives and chemicals.

Just take a look at the ingredient list on a typical loaf of sliced bread, which is truly remarkable:
Wheat Flour, Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup or Sugar, Yeast, Contains 2% or Less of: Ferrous Sulfate (Iron), B Vitamins (Niacin, Thiamine Mononitrate (B1), Riboflavin (B2), Folic Acid), Barley Malt, Soybean Oil, Salt, Calcium Carbonate (Ingredient in Excess of Amount Present in Regular Enriched White Bread), Wheat Gluten, Dough Conditioners (Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Mono and Diglycerides, Calcium Dioxide, Datem and/or Azodicarbonamide) Vitamin D3. Calcium Sulfate, Vinegar, Yeast Nutrients (Monocalcium Phosphate, Dicalcium Phosphate, Ammonium Sulfate, Ammonium Phosphate and/or Ammonium Chloride) Cornstarch, Wheat Starch, Soy Flour, Whey, Calcium Propionate (to Retain Freshness), Soy Lecithin.

Compare that to the ingredients in a loaf of authentic German artisan bread: Water, rye, wheat, salt, yeast, barley malt, spices. That's it! Simple and natural. The acid from rye sourdough acts like a natural preservative and keeps mold away. That made bread shelf stable when people had no fridges.
You be the judge: Which one do you think is better for you?

So, the next time someone tells you “this is the best since sliced bread”, you know better. If slicing bread seems like an effort, perhaps it helps to know that you are doing something good for your health. With a good bread knife and the right technique, slicing is easy: Saw gently back and forth with soft pressure cutting slices about 1/2" thick. Use the free hand to press the top of the crust together to avoid crumbling.
Enjoy!

 

[kenny]

FWIW:

When I bake bread I bake 2 loaves
One loaf stays unsliced in the fridge in a paper lunch bag, and is gone in 2 or 3 days.

The other loaf gets refrigerated a couple hours just to firm it up for slicing.
After slicing it goes into the freezer in a one-gallon ZipLock bag with as much air as possible sucked out.
To use we only remove the slices for toast and return the rest to the freezer.

Then the frozen slices get toasted for only 30 to 45 seconds.
Then we unplug toaster and cover it with aluminum foil for 5 minutes.
Now that the bread has quickly thawed to room temp, we toast it as usual.

It tastes exactly like it was freshly-baked.

The best of both worlds.

Even if you don't bake bread you can do this with unsliced loaves you buy at a real bakery.
Ask them for bread with no preservatives in it.

 

[MaisOuiMadame]

I'm, umm, very passionate about good bread. I bake my own from my own sourdough starter and it has only water, organic rye flour and salt (and sourdough, which consists only if the same flour and water).
(Options: a dash of EVOO and /or raw honey and /or bread spices. But I prefer mine completely simple)


My baguette that my French, uber (UBER!) picky husband loves has only got water, organic wheat flour, salt (and, again the sourdough also made of the same flour and water).

It's delicious.

BUT the above article is only accurate for the US. Most of these additives are forbidden elsewhere . I do occasionally buy packaged sliced brioche for the kids and it only contains what's in my brioche recipe: flour, water, butter , eggs , sugar, yeast .It's still ok to keep for one week.

If you buy a "baguette de tradition" in France you're sure to get a Baguette without any additives by law. It's delicious.



I used to buy my rye bread when I was living in Germany and it was the exact one I bake now with three ingredients only. They sliced it at the bakery and it kept well for about a week also.


So it's a but unfair to blame it all on the slicing..

 

[dk168]

Ignore what is in the bread, it's the slicing that makes it great for convenience.

Without sliced bread, the sandwich business might not be as big as it is now.

Personal opinion and all that.

And yes I regularly buy a mass-produced sliced loaf - a multi-seeds batch loaf called Seeded Sensation from Warburton.

DK

 

[lissyflo]

I agree with Kipari - sliced doesn’t need to mean bad. The ingredients in my sliced supermarket loaf look fairly innocuous to me (I think certain vitamins/minerals have to be added to commercially made bread by law here (U.K.) but I might be wrong). I keep it in the freezer and defrost slices as needed to cut down on waste.

 

[missy]

I love bread but can no longer have gluten so haven't had bread since. I know there are choices that are gluten free but I am not ready yet for that disappointment lol.

 

[Tartansparkles]

I agree with Kipari - sliced doesn’t need to mean bad. The ingredients in my sliced supermarket loaf look fairly innocuous to me (I think certain vitamins/minerals have to be added to commercially made bread by law here (U.K.) but I might be wrong). I keep it in the freezer and defrost slices as needed to cut down on waste.

Same here. Bread in freezer, toasted when required. (I also keep scones in the freezer but they take slightly more planning around defrosting which in turn stops me from eating them).

 

[lissyflo]

Oooh, I didn’t realise scones freeze well. I’m not sure that’s good knowledge for me to have! But if I don’t have to eat all the scones within a couple of days, I’ll be eating clotted cream by itself by the spoonful to use that up instead. Which sounds pretty amazing come to think of it...

 

[MaisOuiMadame]

Oooh, I didn’t realise scones freeze well. I’m not sure that’s good knowledge for me to have! But if I don’t have to eat all the scones within a couple of days, I’ll be eating clotted cream by itself by the spoonful to use that up instead. Which sounds pretty amazing come to think of it...

I like the way you're thinking!

 

[Ally T]

I bake my own bread & sourdough too, but if I do buy from the shop, it will be as simple as I can find from the local bakery. Plus as @lissyflo has said above, the bread ingredients here in the UK are generally very innocent anyway.