Cooking & Baking
In reply to the discussion: What the hell has happened to supermarket sandwich bread? [View all]FoxNewsSucks
(10,428 posts)Consolidation. Monopoly/oligopoly.
Instead of a multitude of local or regional bakeries, we now have Bimbo, Orowheat, and not much else. I pretty much stopped buying bread because the shelves were filled with crap. When Sara Lee (formerly Metz bakeries, now owned by Bimbo) discontinued the potato bread and the corn flour bread (which was REALLY delicious) that was the last straw. Sara Lee introduced new "formulas" which increased the time bread could sit on a shelf to over a month. I asked the bread store employee about that, because to me, food comes from a RECIPE, not a FORMULA.
They also put a lot of air in bread, which makes it nice and lite and soft. But you can't spread peanut butter on it because it's too damn soft.
The whole bread aisle, and there's maybe 3 different breads. Just different name brands, all owned by 2-3 different national companies.
Milton's multi-grain is the only mass-produced bread left that is worth buying.