It seems pretty common for travelers to lament the lack of good bread like at home. Bread basically a living organism that is ultra local. Good bread like at home really only exists at home. Local water, temperature, humidity, and other environmental factors seem to play a big part.
Ask anyone from New York or New Jersey about getting a good pizza or bagel in another state. It doesn’t matter who makes it or if they’re using the exact same recipe, perfect bread can evidently not be replicated outside the region. There is even a bagel company in south Florida, catering to snowbirds turned transplants, that claims to use water from that region to make their bagels.
It’s not as delicate a matter as you make it out to be. I was just looking for a kind that isn’t mushy like toast or full of sugar like a bagle. If classic sourdough or whole grain with an actual crust exist in the US it’s not trivial to find for foreign visitors.
Yeah, good food isn’t trivial to find when you travel. I’m empathetic to that frustration. But judging all bread based on the cheapest abundant and easy to find bread a foreigner can find without any apparent effort seems like a mistake to me. I certainly wouldn’t judge all Italian food by what I found in my hotel in Venice. I wouldn’t judge NY bagels by what I found during my layover at La Guardia. And I wouldn’t judge an entire countries bread based on what I found in the grocery store.
Whole Foods has a great bakery. It was a loaf I bought there that inspired me to start making sourdough. Locally, we have “Cuban bread” that I’m pretty sure is really Tampa bread, if you get it at the right bakeries it’s great. Supermarket bread is mostly nonsense, is that not true elsewhere?
I’m in VA and I have a couple of spots that sell their food “from NY water shipped daily.” Idk it is bomb ass bagels and pizza though. I’m not sure what the water does but I enjoy eating it.
Good bread is expensive or made yourself.
It seems pretty common for travelers to lament the lack of good bread like at home. Bread basically a living organism that is ultra local. Good bread like at home really only exists at home. Local water, temperature, humidity, and other environmental factors seem to play a big part.
Ask anyone from New York or New Jersey about getting a good pizza or bagel in another state. It doesn’t matter who makes it or if they’re using the exact same recipe, perfect bread can evidently not be replicated outside the region. There is even a bagel company in south Florida, catering to snowbirds turned transplants, that claims to use water from that region to make their bagels.
It’s not as delicate a matter as you make it out to be. I was just looking for a kind that isn’t mushy like toast or full of sugar like a bagle. If classic sourdough or whole grain with an actual crust exist in the US it’s not trivial to find for foreign visitors.
Yeah, good food isn’t trivial to find when you travel. I’m empathetic to that frustration. But judging all bread based on the cheapest abundant and easy to find bread a foreigner can find without any apparent effort seems like a mistake to me. I certainly wouldn’t judge all Italian food by what I found in my hotel in Venice. I wouldn’t judge NY bagels by what I found during my layover at La Guardia. And I wouldn’t judge an entire countries bread based on what I found in the grocery store.
Sorry, but two disagreements—good food is trivial to find when you travel in Italy lol and American bread is bad without question
Whole Foods has a great bakery. It was a loaf I bought there that inspired me to start making sourdough. Locally, we have “Cuban bread” that I’m pretty sure is really Tampa bread, if you get it at the right bakeries it’s great. Supermarket bread is mostly nonsense, is that not true elsewhere?
Or at a quality bakery. But those aren’t nearly as profitable as fast food joints.
Old-style Korean bakery goods… yummy…
I’m in VA and I have a couple of spots that sell their food “from NY water shipped daily.” Idk it is bomb ass bagels and pizza though. I’m not sure what the water does but I enjoy eating it.
I worked for a brewery that brought in all their water from the same spring or something. Even though it was a chain with multiple us locations.