[navigatesol]

>I was comparing supermarket breads in Europe and the US

Every major supermarket I've ever been to in the US and Canada has a million styles of bread, including many freshly baked right there at the store.

>but ultimately we're talking about a lower quality product at a higher price

Do you have evidence for lower quality, outside of the roundly debunked "shelf life" argument? Or are these your preferences?

[ilikehurdles]

A million styles of bad bread in comparison to any one of the cheap loaves available in a German market. In many major US supermarkets, the freshly baked product is worse than the stale packaged product. Try it at your local albertsons or walmart. It's acceptable if you eat it warm and after that you can use it as a sponge to soak up spills. The $7 artisan whatever quarter of a loaf at Whole Foods is maybe in the same ballpark as what you find in Germany and you still have to be lucky enough to get it fresh. The normal packaged rectangular bread loaves people buy in the US are what we called "toaster bread" in Europe (bread to only be eaten toasted).

What would you consider objectively lower quality anyway? Is use of preservatives and corn syrup lower quality, or is that a preference for shelf life and sweets? Is a McDonalds burger low quality or is that just preference? I can take you to a generic bakery in my old rural small town in Germany where the 25-cent pretzel would blow the socks off any pretzel you can find for any price in any store in the US, but maybe you'd call that preference.

[refurb]

I love how long the bread argument thread is getting.

Reminds me of coffee discussions. “Peet’s is good coffee!”, “No it’s shit, you don’t know good coffee!”, “You just have an unsophisticated palate!”.