[Insanity]

Honest question.. where? Most bread seems to be high in additives and promoted as a “healthy food”, like additional vitamines etc.

And even when buying natural bread without these added “benefits”, it often has high levels of sodium (up to like 200mg per slice).

Bread is one of the easiest, most plain things to make, yet finding high quality bread isn’t straightforward in the States. But I do really want to know which shops and which brand you get, I’d love to find good bread lol.

[kstenerud]

Yup, agreed. The first thing my gf complained about when coming to North America for 6 months was the food. And she never stopped complaining.

Then we went to Germany and I finally understood.

Not only can I pop in to the local bakery on the corner (or the next corner, or the next) for the most amazing breads ever, but I could also go to a Rewe or Edeka and get quite good bread that's still head-and-shoulders above anything in America.

My fav right now is a walnut spelt bread roll that I get for 90 cents apiece at Edeka. A bit pricey but it's worth it. Put on some President butter [1] and some cheeses and it's divine!

[1] https://www.president.de/produkte/butter/meersalzbutter-250-...

[Insanity]

Yeah, I was like that. It’s been almost 5 years so complaining is to a minimum, I got used to a lot of the food, but bread is one of those “staple foods” to me that still has me complaining every now and then haha

[slibhb]

Search Google maps for "bakery" and sort by rating.

It's not hard to find a good bakery in any dense area in the US. I have to imagine people claiming otherwise are indulging in Yankee-bashing, a favorite European pastime.

[thomasmg]

What one considers a "good bread" or "good bakery" depends on the person. I'm from Switzerland. When I was in the United States (Bay Area, San Francisco), in 2000-2003, I did _not_ find what I consider a "good bread". I did find "bakery".

[JumpCrisscross]

> When I was in the United States (Bay Area, San Francisco)

The good bread is in the Santa Cruz mountains. In San Francisco, I’ve only had it in wealthy homes where home staff made it fresh that day.

[thatfrenchguy]

I mean, in San Francisco, you’ll find plenty of good bread and pastries, it’s the only mid size city in the US that has enough French people to have two competing French language schools for kiddos.

[chipsrafferty]

I live in the largest city in the US and saying that the average bread/pastry quality even comes close to Europe is insane.

Sure, you can get good bread here. However it's going to cost you 5x what it costs in Europe and it might take you up to 30 minutes to get too depending on where you live. Most bread in the US is low quality. Most bread in Europe is high quality. There is good bread to be found in the US, and there's bad bread in Europe. But the average bread just isn't even close to being equal.

[slibhb]

> Sure, you can get good bread here

Yes.

[trenchpilgrim]

I can walk five minutes to a local grocery store and get fresh bread from their bakery. Immigrant bakeries are also great, I had some buns from a chinese bakery last weekend that were a "if this is what food is supposed to taste like, what have I been eating until now???" moment

[Insanity]

My partner is Chinese and so we get Chinese (and bread-like products from other Asian countries) quite often.

In my opinion, it’s tasty but also not quite what I would expect bread to be like, mainly because it’s so soft. It is a running joke between us that Chinese teeth can’t chew through European bread (like an actual French baguette).

But agreed, Chinese bread > American bread for flavor at least!

[hulitu]

> Bread is one of the easiest, most plain things to make, yet finding high quality bread isn’t straightforward in the States

Finding high quality bread isn’t straightforward anywhere in EU. It either has sugar or additives or it is cooked at a too low temperature to be useful.

[watwut]

> or it is cooked at a too low temperature to be useful

In what way is that bread "not useful"?

[chipsrafferty]

cooked too low

[cm2012]

https://www.ibfoods.com/locations/

Long island new york, here is a a store chain with out of this world bread.

[murukesh_s]

Wondering why someone did not solve the problem already? Of all the countries in the world US is brimming with entrepreneurs who want to "solve" a consumer problem, and with modern population I assume there is enough demand on fresh/healthier products - why on earth someone wouldn't try to fix it there?

[JumpCrisscross]

> why someone did not solve the problem already?

Most Americans are fine eating stale or preserved bread. (Almost all pre-sliced supermarket bread is the latter.) You just don’t have enough people to spread the cost of baking fresh bread throughout the day outside wealthy communities.

That said, a lot of European bread is also trash. There are simply some bread-loving ones where it isn’t. Similarly, there are places in America with great bread (New Orleans, New York and Miami), and places without (Northern California and the Midwest).

[hansenzhang]

> That said, a lot of European bread is also trash.

Yes thank you for pointing this out. I've noticed even the bakeries around me (in Switzerland) aren't that great; for me the best are from the farmers markets and even still you have to be discerning for which are actually good. On the other side I've had some fantastic bread in the US from specialty bakeries.

[plorkyeran]

Solving the problem of european tourists being unable to figure out that they have to walk to the bakery section of the supermarket rather than the shelf-stable bread-like products section if they want something they consider bread does not sound like much of a business opportunity.

[Ylpertnodi]

>Solving the problem of european tourists being unable to figure out that they have to walk to the bakery section of the supermarket rather than the shelf-stable bread-like products section if they want something they consider bread

Every supermarket I can locally go to has a bread-on- the shelf section, as well as a very fresh bread section. Not to mention 'bread shops' exist.

Don't underestimate the ability of tourists from anywhere to not understand how to look around a shop.

Finding bread in America that isn't over-overloaded with sugar is very difficult.

Quite a few of my family take their own bread to the US. Of late, the problem has been solved as, apart from work, people just aren't travelling there anymore - for non bread-related reasons, of course. For the US fam that now travel back to the eu (an awful lot) more, they go wild for eu bread: it just doesn't taste like cak, /sp - i mean cake.

[enaaem]

You think Europe does not have supermarkets?

[panick21]

Because this isn't the sort of problem some tech bro entrepreneur can solve. Its a systematic problem in the whole supply chain that end with consumer demand. And this is harder to do, once that whole supply chain has been destroyed. You need to shift the whole culture in terms of what they value and how it works.

[baobun]

Next up on Show HN: Uber for baking

[JumpCrisscross]

> where?

Wealthy communities. Upper-middle class, maybe.

That, or an immigrant bakery. (Mexican. Korean. Taiwanese. Japanese.)