Real bread is just flour, water, salt, and yeast. So why do American grocery stores sell such poor quality bread? You may be a home bread baker in the states wondering why your own bread tastes better than Dave’s Killer Bread. Or perhaps you’re from outside of the US and you’re wondering why American supermarket bread tastes so disgusting. Either way, I want to shed some light on that today. So, why is American supermarket bread so bad?
As a general rule, American supermarket bread tastes bad due to the fast fermentation process and the preservatives that are added to the dough. The quick fermentation process makes supermarket bread harder to digest and doesn’t allow the natural flavors of the bread to develop. Preservatives and dough conditioners are usually added to make up for the fast fermentation and to improve the bread’s shelf life, but they end up giving the bread an artificial flavor.
Photo above byHow can I recycle thisis licensed underCC BY 2.0
In this article, I want to go over the four factors that make US grocery store bread inferior to artisan or traditionally-made bread. I also want to make a plea for why you should make your own bread if you live in the United States. So, hear me out. Here are four things that make American supermarket bread taste bad.
Four Factors That Make American Supermarket Bread Taste Bad
1. Fast Fermentation Times
One reason that American supermarket bread tastes so bad is that each loaf contains a relatively large amount of yeast and goes through a very fast fermentation process.
Traditionally-made artisan bread is slowly fermented with a small amount of yeast or sourdough starter. This long, slow rise gives traditional bread a better flavor and texture, in addition to improving the bread’s digestibility.
Since mass-produced bread companies generally value output more than tradition, they usually put a lot of yeast in their loaves to make them rise faster. Whereas an artisan sourdough bread might go through a 20 hour fermentation process, a loaf of supermarket bread might only rise for two hours total, or even less!
As fermentation occurs in dough, yeasts and bacteria produce small amounts of acids and alcohol in the dough. This leads to the traditional bread flavor that we all love! But, the faster dough rises, the less flavor the final loaf of bread will have. So, when commercial bread is pumped full of baker’s yeast, it doesn’t really ferment very much, it just fills up with air! This is why American supermarket bread usually lacks good flavor; it simply hasn’t had enough time to ferment properly.
2. Preservatives and Dough Conditioners
American supermarket bread usually contains some preservatives and dough conditioners to make the dough easy to handle by machines, to improve the flavor of the bread, and to help the bread rise. These preservatives and conditioners can also negatively affect the taste of the bread.
Two common preservatives and dough conditioners are potassium bromate and azodicarbonamide. Neither of these ingredients are present in traditionally-made bread. They can give the bread a strange taste, and they can even be dangerous.
Potassium bromate, for example, a common dough conditioner in American supermarket bread, has been linked to kidney and thyroid cancer in rodents (source). Large bread companies add this to their bread to help it rise. Traditionally, yeast is all that you need for bread to rise.
Azodicarbonamide, which is added to dough as a bleaching and leavening agent, is also tied to cancer in lab animals (source). Why are bread companies adding this to our food?
Even though some preservatives and dough conditioners may be harmless to humans, others, like the ones mentioned above are questionable, and they make bread taste a little bit off. Artisan and homemade breads that don’t contain these ingredients will almost always taste superior to the stuff from the supermarket.
3. Bleached Flour
As a general rule, American supermarket breads are made with enriched and bleached white flour. Bleached flour is highly processed and is whitened to give the flour a more standard color and a softer texture.
So why do bread companies use bleached flour? It’s likely due to shelf-life The “bleaching” process improves the keeping qualities of the flour, which is important for mass-produced bread. Companies don’t want their flour to go bad.
So, basically the flour that is used in supermarket bread has had much of the fiber and nutrients processed out to increase the flour’s shelf life. Then, they add vitamins and minerals back into the flour by “enriching” it to make it seem healthier. Unfortunately, much of the natural taste of the wheat grain is completely missing from enriched and bleached flours. This is just another one of the contributing factors to the inferior taste of supermarket bread.
Because of the superiority of good-quality flour, artisan bakeries and home bakers usually choose unbleached bread flours and whole grain flours to make tastier bread.
4. Added Sugar
Sugar is added to American supermarket bread in the form of white cane sugar and, more commonly, as high-fructose corn syrup. Bread companies add sugar in order to sweeten the bread, soften it, and also to improve the flavor of the final loaf.
When used in small amounts, white sugar is not that strange of an ingredient in bread. Many bakeries use sugar or honey in their sandwich loaves to make the bread a little bit softer and sweeter. However, companies that produce bread on a large scale usually add sugar to drastically improve the flavor of their insipid bread. Bread flavor traditionally comes from the slow fermentation process. Since supermarket bread usually lacks a slow fermentation, companies add sugar to make up for that fact.
So, essentially, supermarket bread rises too quickly and it lacks the flavor that comes from fermentation. To make up for the missing flavor, companies add in sugar to compensate for it. But, in reality, sweeteners are a bad substitute for proper bread flavor, and the difference in taste is obvious.
Conclusion: Make Your Own Bread
No matter where you go in the US, almost all supermarket bread is going to taste worse, and be worse for you, than homemade bread. Sure, there are some artisan bakeries that sell good bread in supermarkets, but these can be inconsistent and hard to find. The best option for getting good bread in the US is to actually make it yourself. Plus, with homemade bread, you know exactly what went into every single slice of bread that you eat.
To make a simple loaf of homemade white bread, check out Jim Lahey’s No Knead Bread or my Simple White Bread recipe. If you want to go even more traditional, you can try to make my Master Sourdough Bread recipe or my Sourdough Sandwich Bread recipe. Any of these breads will be far superior in taste and nutrition to anything you can get in the supermarket.
