Skip to main content

Bread and Cheese

The stuff of life. A ploughmans lunch in a country pub. Cheddar rolls for a picnic in the hills. Brie smeared on crusty French bread. Why, then, do Americans struggle so hard with the concept?

It's not that you can't get decent bread and cheese over here. You can - if you go to posh shops and pay inflated prices. It's that the everyday stuff is so abysmal.

Let's start with cheese. If you go to the regular packaged cheese section in the supermarket, there's a choice of about four varieties. The most flavoursome is the "sharp cheddar", which is about on a par with the mild Cheddar sold in the UK. What's worse is that the packets are all labeled "natural cheese". This makes me depressed every time I see it. What kind of a country is it where you can get unnatural cheese? And the citizens might not know the difference unless it's pointed out to them?






THIS is what receives the proud title of "American cheese". Processed, plastic-wrapped "cheese food". This is what many Americans think of when they hear the word cheese. I have a book - a novel, admittedly, but presumably reflecting real life to some extent - where a well-off 15-year-old girl isn't actually sure what cheddar is. You'd think that a country so much a leader in world affairs could come up with a few decent cheeses. Hey, it's done it with wine. Maybe cheese will be the next big thing.

So much for cheese. We move on to bread. Graham and I have recently started buying the bread made in the in-store bakery I work at, and it's made our lives so much better. At first I made bread whenever possible, but then it got to be summer, and slaving over a hot oven in 100 degree heat is no fun, I can tell you. So we tried the stuff on the supermarket shelves.

What's wrong with it? What's right with it? For a start, it's sweet. Yes, there is sugar in the bread. Or honey, or molasses, or any other kind of sweetener you can think of. Occasionally I tracked down a brand which was sugar free, but it still tasted kind of sweet. And it's floppy - this weird kind of not-fresh-but-not-stale soft texture. And the slices are small. And it keeps for weeks. I mean, seriously. Even in our frugally air-conditioned flat, this stuff wouldn't go mouldy for ages. Convenient, sure, but what in the world do they put in it? And do I really want to eat it?

I started to wonder the other day what Americans actually do with this bread. They obviously buy it, or the shops wouldn't sell it. But it makes pathetic sandwiches - nothing like the packed rolls which Subway and its ilk purvey. It makes pretty mediocre toast. I guess maybe kids would eat it. Oh of course! It's a playdough substitute. I should have known.
Culturally, Wonder Bread is associated with ... the childhood habit of playing with the malleable bread to form small sculptures or even projectiles.
(from a complete guide to American life)

And yes, I realise that British shops are not free of plastic white sliced. Nor yet processed sliced cheese. But you can buy packaged bread which has a little substance and taste to it, and ages at a respectable rate. And a mature cheddar or ripe brie without breaking the bank. Mmmm. Cheese sandwich, anyone?

But is it food?
Labels:

Comments

Sally Eyre said…
I so agree with you about the cheese, although here you have a decent range and availability of soft cheeses but for a decent hard cheese . . . . we tend to buy it once a year and choose it to go well with Christmas cake. Mmmmm.

Bread is not really an issue and one of the supermarkets makes tiger bread - it has a crackled top. Would you know of it, or have a recipe? I've looked and failed to find one and it is scrummy.
8 October 2009 at 02:15
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...
Post a Comment
Read more

Birmingham: Temples to many things

Birmingham's cathedral is overshadowed by more modern temples: the mirrored swirls of New Street train station; the dotted bulge of the Selfridges store; the lacy blocks of the library; the pillars and pediments of the museum and art gallery. Museum and town hall Next to all these, Birmingham Cathedral, in its square of dusty grass, isolated from the main flow of shopping and travel, seems less like a dominant building and more like a minor chapel. It turns out the unpretentiousness is deliberate. St Philip's Church was built in 1715 when the worshipping population of Birmingham had outgrown the medieval constraints of St Martin in the Bullring . Birmingham remained part of the Diocese of Worcester until 1905, when Charles Gore pushed for the creation of a new diocese and became its first bishop. Seeing the depth of need in the city, he decided to convert St Philip's to a cathedral rather than spend money on a grand new building. Birmingham Cathedral had to be restored afte...
Post a Comment
Read more

Southwell Minster, Newark-on-Trent, and a pilgrim cellist

You may remember that I recently mentioned people doing weird and wonderful things. Well, I found another one. Last year, Kenneth Wilson visited all 42 English cathedrals. On a bike. With a cello. It was a cargo bike; the whole setup, cello and all, weighed about 50 kg; and he mostly managed a rate of one cathedral per day, with occasional rest days and train journeys where absolutely necessary. That's a lot of cycling. Of course, he wrote a book about it, and when I found out he was on the schedule at Newark Book Festival, I had to go. It also provided the perfect excuse to visit Southwell Minster. Newark-on-Trent feels like it is in the depths of the Nottinghamshire countryside, but it isn't actually hard to get to, I thought as I buzzed along the dual carriageways of the A50, A453, A52 and A46 on a sunny Sunday morning. All along the route, the grass stood bleached and crispy, scorched by the summer heat.  Newark Castle with crispy grass The author event was at the National...
Post a Comment
Read more