[Insanity]

If there are these places on the internet the article mentions which perfect bread ingredients “to the gram”, someone should share that with American bakeries.

It’s near impossible to find decent bread, compared to EU countries like France/Belgium/Germany. :(

[throwaway219450]

I’ve always found King Arthur to be reliable? Their recipes are good and include metric, you can get the flour anywhere and they’re very proactive with support if you have questions about tweaking. Also good books.

Good bread exists, it’s just not cheap like it is in Europe.

[mauvehaus]

King Arthur has classes in Norwich, VT! Come and take some! My partner got me a pretzel making class a couple years ago, and it has made baking soft pretzels a treat.

Boston Logan is probably your closest truly useful airport, and the Dartmouth Coach goes direct from there to Hanover.

[nkrisc]

King Arthur recipes are good in my limited home baking experience. As long as you remain somewhat near to it, you’ll get something edible.

I’ve found though for things like hydration or proofing times your environment is going to have a noticeable impact on that.

King Arthur recipes are written with their products in mind, so if you’re using other flour make sure to check the protein content and that it matches! I’ve made that mistake before when I had consistently bad results and realized the flour I had was quite a bit lower in protein content despite having the same general “all purpose” moniker.

[dredmorbius]

KA do make specific bread flours (high-gluten / high-protein), so that if you're used to those a GP or pastry flour will yield far less gluten development.

That said, I've used a cheap bleached white AP flour when that's all that's available and had ... quite good results. My preference is bread flours, and generally at least some whole wheat in the mix.

[cogman10]

The american pallet is simply different and all our breads tend to be sweeter. The other part of this is that amercian breads tend to only use 1 grain, wheat. And they tend to either use whole wheat or bleached wheat.

Even when something is a "9 grain" bread, usually what that actually means is it's wheat bread with other grains in the crust.

Very hard to find a rye bread in the US.

[dredmorbius]

I think you'll find two things are true about American bulk baked goods:

- The quality is highly uniform.

- The quality is highly bland.

As with any mass-produced food, the goals are typically quantity and low cost, though often with a putative appearance of quality or artisanal character. The compromises are largely against a high-quality product, though there are places where this may be found, albeit at far higher prices.

Of you may bake your own.

[socalgal2]

not disagreeing, the US certainly doesn't have the variety of France/Belgium/Germany, and the average is certainly much worse.

But, there are local bakeries here and there and many of them seem to make pretty good breads? Maybe I don't know what you're specifically looking for though. I'm in LA at the moment and I can be both frustrated with the average but still find some good stuff.

[SubmarineClub]

> I’m in LA

Oh gee, who’d imagine you’d be able to find a decent baker in in LA?

Always hilarious how people in LA/NYC assume that obviously the experience of living in one of the largest cities in the country applies to the whole of the country.

[doublepg23]

I enjoy a local Pittsburgh bakery Mancini's. That's my benchmark for "good bread", I've never been to Europe though.

[wiredfool]

Eh, I found the Seattle artisanal bakeries (Fremont, Grand Central) to be better than all but the best I’ve found in Europe.

[derbOac]

Yeah there are a lot of great bakeries in the US; you just need to know where they are.