On White Bread

The surprise here is how interesting the subject turns out to be:
In 1890, 90 percent of the country's bread was baked in homes. The rest was purchased from tiny neighborhood bakeries. By 1930, this trend had reversed completely: 90 percent of bread was purchased, and purchased from increasingly large, increasingly distant factories....
Legions of food reformers, social workers, public-health officials, advertising executives, and an astonishing number of diet gurus worked frantically to convince Americans that choosing the wrong bread would lead to serious problems. Some pinpointed newfangled loaves as the source of cancer, diabetes, criminal delinquency, tuberculosis, kidney failure, overstimulated nervous systems, and even "white race suicide." Others heralded modern bread as a savior, delivering the nation from drudgery, hunger, and dangerous contagions carried by unscientific bread. But they could all agree on one thing: Incorrect food choices were the root cause of nearly all of the nation's moral, physical, and social problems....
Even that sentimental icon of all that is good—"Mother's bread"—was denounced under the banner of a safe and efficient diet. Scientific American, women's magazines, and home-economics textbooks portrayed careless home baking as a threat to family health, while other observers wondered whether even the most careful housewife should bake at all. 
This is one of those things I've always wondered about, albeit only vaguely:  how did we as a nation come to give up something as wonderful as fresh bread?  It's not hard to make, and a local bakery isn't a huge extravagance.  Many other nations have managed to continue having locally-baked, fresh bread available even as they've modernized their economies.

Now I know.  There's something about these little panics by mass media that we should begin to recognize:  they always makes things worse.  Except, of course, for Big Bread, which came out gloriously well from the exercise.

13 comments:

E Hines said...

...how did we as a nation come to give up something as wonderful as fresh bread? It's not hard to make, and a local bakery isn't a huge extravagance.

I can't speak for the nation, but I can speak from personal experience. A local bakery isn't an extravagance, but the bread my wife and I used to bake was better--whole wheat raisin bread, three loaves per week. Fresh out of the oven, and I could easily destroy one, with butter, as soon as it had cooled enough to cut (although my wife had more discipline).

But then we discovered that she had had a mild gluten allergy all her life, and relatively minor things going on with her health that she had thought were normal could be traced back to that allergy.

Since she's given up wheat-based foods, and cut way back on corn-based foods, she's felt a ton better (without realizing that she wasn't feeling good all along), and her disposition is much improved.

I lost my home-made bread (my own weight can't stand that much routine butter intake...), but I gained almost as much as my wife did.

Eric Hines

Texan99 said...

"Dangerous contagions carried by unscientific bread" -- and you wonder why we had to give it up? I myself never eat any food unless it's scientific.

I can't recall that I've ever read any old account of experts' views on food -- going back centuries -- that didn't sound like perfect lunacy from the perspective of time. So I'd be surprised if what we're hearing today wasn't pretty much cut out of the same cloth. And honestly, what I see in most people's grocery baskets is a mystery to me.

Grim said...

It is interesting to see how focused the 1930s were on the question of what was "scientific." One of the positive advances of recent years has been the notion that it's OK if some spheres of life are not scientific! There's something humane about the idea of bread you baked yourself, for your own family, in your own oven; how bad could it really be?

raven said...

forget the bread- ever try to find a really good pastry shop these days? One that has real fruit, thin flaky crusts, genuine egg custard fillings, etc? Most "bakeries" seem to be an assembly line when mass market mixes are dragged out of a five gallon pail,, covered with sugar and dumped into a deep fat fryer. You could run a diesel for a couple of miles on six wrung-out donuts.

Texan99 said...

I don't normally have that much good to say of the French, but everywhere I went last fall there was first-class, simple, cheap food. That we don't have it here is purely a result of crazy policies and crazy choices.

james said...

When given a food voucher because of a missed flight I found that was also true of the airport food--a simple cheese sandwich, but with very good bread, good cheese, good proportions, and an absurdly high price tag.

Texan99 said...

Yes -- great food even in the train stations. Great food on every corner. Just amazing.

bthun said...

"Yes -- great food even in the train stations."

That could be said of many countries in Europe and Asia. At least that was the case around 40 years ago.

I do recall one somewhat unusual thing about having access to wonderfully prepared and delicious food overseas. After spending a great deal of time over there exploring, eating, and drinking -I learned to appreciate warm beer and Ouzo at any temperature!-, I recall craving either a medium rare sirloin steak or, at minimum, a Burger King Whopper just as soon as possible upon returning to the US. Chased with some Kentucky or Tennessee branch water and a good, ice cold beer, natch...

Anonymous said...

Raven, the biggest city near where I live somehow was graced with two European-style bakeries, one French (owned by a Frenchman) and one German-style. The non-European bakeries are decent, as far as I've been able to tell (Skip the cupcake place, though, unless you love frosting).

Fresh home-made bread is rare at Festung Kleinrot because of culture. My parents both grew up eating rice more than bread, so sibling and I lean towards rice (or pasta) more than bread. However, I make mean saffron buns and Hamentaschen.

LittleRed1

douglas said...

Well, that is one nice thing about living in L.A. is that there are some great local eateries, bakeries and pastries- Believe it or not, one of the better ones is a Cuban family- great european style pastries, and Cuban pork sandwiches to die for...

There is something cool about Europe and how every block (it seems) has it's local bakery, and it's just the way it is to get fresh bread daily (maybe every other). One thing I didn't like so much was the fact that you had to be on the normal schedule for things- going late to the bakery was not useful.

Coming back, the one thing we were dying for was good Mexican food- you haven't had bad Mexican food till you've been in Switzerland for three months, and tried an expensive Mexican restaurant to get your fix, but they couldn't even make Margaritas correctly...

Anonymous said...

Douglas, I tried Mexican food in Salzburg once. The legumes were a "tad" firm. The waiter asked my opinion and I suggested that the cook needed to give the pinto beans a little more cooking time: six hours should be enough, four if he pre-soaked them. Apparently the Austrians cooked them for about half an hour or so.

LittleRed1

dellbabe68 said...

Here in the Bronx, I go to Arthur Avenue for great Italian food. I go to Teitel Brothers, which has been around for 100 years, for cacciatorini sausage, which I have them slice lengthwise since it somehow improves the taste, and then I go to one of numerous bread stores and buy the olive loaf, and then I stand on the curb stuffing my face. I eventually eat at one of the restaurants, but you cannot believe (or maybe you all can) that fresh, hot olive bread with that dried sausage. Un-real.

douglas said...

I'm hungry again...

LR- Exactly!