When only white sliced bread will do

1 day ago

"For the Victorians, white bread was a marker of quality and prestige. For us, its very popularity has seen it relegated to the status of junk food." Ruby Tandoh/The Guardian

Today in a very minor effort to clear my freezer I made myself a tomato sandwich with some sliced white bread - something we never have in this house, as we have developed the middle-class food snobbery of virtually only eating sourdough bread, and never sliced. You might, every now and then, come across my husband berating the bakery staff in the supermarkets for slicing all their bread.

However, my two granddaughters do shifts at their local Baker's Delight as a way of earning a bit of extra money, and this means that they get free bread of various kinds. On one occasion we were given this sliced white loaf - this is indeed a Baker's Delight white sliced loaf - so whatever we used it for then, the remains were thrown into the freezer. Hence my tomato sandwich today. Normally my sandwiches are open sandwiches and made with sour dough bread, so it was a change for me. And I have to say it was pretty nice. Very plain but nice.

Anyway it reminded me that I said I would investigate the notion of slices, so here I am beginning with sliced white bread. And let me begin with that saying - the best thing since sliced bread:

"There have been at least 10 iPhones since then, plus a machine that can literally harness the power of the stars. Yet when someone wants to hype up a new product today, they don’t say, it’s the best thing “since Bluetooth” or “the rocket that took man to the moon” or even “the polio vaccine”. They say it’s the best thing since sliced bread – because, nearly a century on, we still haven’t invented anything better." Amelia Tait/The Guardian

And yes, that is a thing to be considered.

The machine shown above is the second ever made by its inventor Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa. The first one collapsed from overuse. The date is 1928, and its first commercial use was by a baking company in Missouri. It was not until 1937 that a bread slicing machine was in use in Britain. I don't know when it reached our shores. Nowadays my husband tells me you can slice it yourself in the supermarket, which I must say I find a somewhat frightening concept.

According to Wikipedia the effect of cheap white bread ready sliced was a boon to the poor and even the not so poor with the effect that:

"As commercially sliced bread resulted in uniform and somewhat thinner slices, people ate more slices of bread at a time. They also ate bread more frequently, because of the ease of getting and eating another piece of bread. This increased consumption of bread and, in turn, increased consumption of spreads, such as jam, to put on the bread." Wikipedia

And, of course, the bread of that time also included lots of additives, that were not particularly healthy, and so gradually we swung to sourdough, grain and wholemeal breads, with sales of sliced white bread plummeting. There came a minor bit of a pendulum swing away from 'trendy' sourdough, partly reinforced by stories like this:

"a woman made headlines in 2015 by using small amounts of her vaginal yeast in an attempt to get her sourdough starter off to a flying start. If that doesn’t have you hankering for the safe simplicity of a loaf of sliced white, I don’t know what will." Ruby Tandoh

Actually though the real competition came from all the rich variety of wraps and flatbreads that now fill almost an aisle in your local supermarket.

Then apparently during COVID sales of sliced white bread climbed again, because people rediscovered those comfort food things that could really only be made with white sliced bread - for example - boiled eggs with soldiers, cheese toasties:

"Cheap bread, with its stretchiness and habit of sticking together, is made for the task. Wraps are not." Emma Sturgess/The Guardian

It was also noted that toasties made with thick chunks of dense sourdough bread are really not the thing for a toastie - you need a knife and fork and have to chew far too much.

Plus bacon sandwiches, and here in Australia the barbecued sausage with tomato sauce in a slice of white bread - you can't do that with sourdough:

It's probably swinging back again, although maybe now there is more of a balance. Plus the quality of the packaged sliced white bread is probably much better than it used to be and if you take the following advice then why not indulge every now and then:

"Choose bread made with the four essential ingredients: flour, water, yeast, salt. Any other ingredients should be readily recognisable ones," Joanna Blythman/The Guardian

And that applies to sourdough as well.

There are a few things that you really cannot make without sliced white bread, the first of which are two traditional British desserts - Apple charlotte - this one is from Rick Stein and Summer pudding this one from Delia.

White bread is perfect for stuffings, like my favourite Celery stuffing from Jane Grigson via Anna Tobias on the Great British Chefs website. In similar vein it is great as an addition for all kinds of meatballs and meatloaves, and also for breadcrumbs and their fancier cousins gremolata and pangrattato and croutons.

Then there are those sort of pastry cases - whereby you cut a square of buttery bread and place it in a muffin tray before filling with something and baking, and a rather grander Garlic bread pasta torte that I found on the A Taste of Home website.

And speaking of bread becoming pastry I found a YouTube video entitled - Take 12 slices of bread, roll them flat, result - awesome from somebody calling themselves scrumdiddlyumptious. In some ways the dishes on offer were pretty over the top sometimes, and I didn't watch it all the way to the end, but he or she seemed to be concocting a whole range of things that involved rolling your bread out very thinly, piling stuff on top, then sometimes rolling it up and then baking, frying or grilling. Whether you are tempted by any of them or not it's a testament to the creativity going on out there in the digital world. Have a look for a moment or two.

To finish - two British things - the slightly posh and cheffy Melba toast and the club sandwich. Really you cannot make club sandwiches with anything other than sliced white bread, and even though we may scoff they are actually wonderful and possibly sliced white bread's finest moment.