Food Review: Sliced Bread
The Roomba. Toyota’s Prius. The Nintendo Wii. Apple’s iPhone or iPod. Each of these products is innovative in its own way, and each has its proponents who would no doubt gush over it. Imagine a review one such fan might write, and you just might think of a certain phrase: “it’s the best thing since sliced bread†(or, if you prefer your praise wordier, “the greatest invention since sliced breadâ€). Would it surprise you to read that? I didn’t think so. However, what most people don’t seem to realize is that sliced bread isn’t all that great. There, I said it. I’m going to go against the grain and argue that sliced bread isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sure, maybe you grew up on Oroweat or Wonderbread, and sliced pre-packaged bread is all you’ve ever known. If that’s the case, I encourage you to look beyond the plastic bag and buy something fresh.
I’ve eaten a lot of bread in my time. Fresh homemade bread is the king of them all, but you can find good bread at a bakery or even in the grocery store. But here’s the thing about sliced bread: it dries out quickly. If it’s been sitting on the shelf for a day or two, by the time you get it home it won’t have that moist inside that is honestly the best part of good bread. Trader Joe’s used to stock a “hearty peasant bread,†meant to be heated in the oven for ten minutes or so. You’d end up with a round loaf of bread with a crunchy crust and a moist, chewy, bready inside, perfect for snacking. Now they only sell it sliced, and it just doesn’t come out of the oven with the same features.
Do you like toast? Do you love toast? Because that’s really the only reason to buy pre-sliced bread (pre-sliced bread being what we’re talking about here). It’s hard to cut bread to fit in a toaster. But don’t go telling me that you can’t get out a knife to cut a slice of bread for your sandwich, or for a little snack in the afternoon. Besides, pre-sliced bread is often too thin to be useful for anything but toast.
It really comes down to how much you like toast. Unless you’re a toast fiend, you owe it to yourself to buy some fresh, unsliced bread and find out just how good this ancient staple of human sustenance can be. As for the idiom, using it is like saying something is as good as canned peaches. You know what makes canned peaches good? Hint: it’s the peaches, not the can.
July 7th, 2007 at 8:55 am
I agree, pre-sliced bread is far worse than homemade, freshly-baked bread. But going “against the grain?” The agony of the puns… the agony!