Reply to Why are so many American pastry and bread shops really bad?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Jesus lady, you should have been here before the 80s. It was white bread or nothing. You can't even imagine.[/quote]

This is an exaggeration. Born in mid 70s, lived in suburbs in five states (including Midwest and south), never had white bread in the house. You definitely had to look for wheat bread or know how to bake it. Very few people knew how to handle sourdough or make their own cakes or pastry.

[b]There was definitely a loss of baking skills in homes after WWII through the 80s though. Much of the baking skills of immigrant families was lost as people tried to claim only an American identity. [/b]

[/quote]

On one hand, you're ignoring the long history of "whitebread" American families making their own breads. Up into the first decade of the 20th century over 90% of flour sold in the US was for home consumption. And, of course, many immigrants were from cultures (typically poor, typically peasant or urban workers) who didn't have amazing bread traditions of their own, outside special breads for holidays. Because of the expense of wood burning ovens, in much of Europe by the 19th century it was already more common to get bread from the local bakery, and those breads could be pretty mediocre, packed with fillers in the days of no regulations or quality oversight. There's also nothing particularly special about daily bread, while the special holiday baked traditions have always been maintained, to this day, for obvious reasons. You'd probably be appalled by the mediocrity of so much of the breads the poor and working people ate. We make fun of Wonder bread today, but let's be frank, it wasn't amazing "back then" either. The wealthy and middle classes always ate better, of course, having cooks and maids who could make the bread if it wasn't outsourced to a local good bakery, but their idealized bread were the soft billowy white breads made with refined flour, not the coarse and heavy peasant breads.

People stopped making daily bread at home in the interwar years in the US because it was easier and cheaper to buy it outside the house. When you're a busy mother with four kids and a house to run, plus even working outside the house, the rise of the inexpensive sliced bread was a lifesaver. And as an excellent baker who does make her own sourdough bread every now and then (I keep a starter jar) even I have to acknowledge it's no better, and at the end of the day, no cheaper, than going to the half dozen excellent options I have for a good loaf of sourdough. I make it at home because it's a pleasure, not because it's better. And that's the reality with bread these days.

Anyway, we have plenty of excellent breads in the US. They're typically not sold in a "boulangerie" type place but in good supermarkets and bakeries. [/quote]

This is why I read DC UM, thank you for that informative analysis!

I agree that home baking is not a big thing in europe; suggesting we bake christmas cookies to my eu fam is always met with ??? Their baking is confined to like…once a year donuts. This birthday cake made of layers of storebought cookies and whipped cream. One relative makes a yogurt cake for a specific relative’s birthday and ppl act as impressed as if it is a wedding cake every year.

Bread in europe haa been going super downhill fast, the omnipresent hot loaves you can buy everywhere are basically subway roll quality now. [/quote]

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