Of course you are capable of baking bread at home. But there are times when you must do the practical thing and embrace the store-bought loaf.
Good news. Your childhood favorite (aka soft white bread) is still there in the bread aisle, but now youāve got even grainier options. In the bakery section, baguettes and boules beckon.
There's a problem, though. āThe packaging on bread is really misleading,ā says Kristen Gradney, a Baton Rougeābased registered dietitian and spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. White bread needs little explanation, but venture beyond that and you're in for some label confusion.
I asked Gradney and a pair of bread experts at Whole Foods Market to sort through the carb-laden lingo. You want to build a better sandwich? Know your bread first.
Start with flour, yeast, water, and salt. Add a sweetener like sugar or high fructose corn syrup; an artificial emulsifier called datem; calcium propionate, a preservative; and a few other multi-syllabic ingredients that help with texture and shelf life, and youāve got yourself a typical bagged sandwich bread, says Eric Cusimano, global grocery category manager for Whole Foods Market (which doesnāt allow bread with said artificial preservatives on its shelves.)
Read the ingredients label if you want to avoid the artificial stuff. Naturally occurring preservatives include ascorbic acid, cultured wheat, vinegar, and honey.
You might find freshly baked bread from the bakery section to be ācleaner,ā with fewer ingredients, but it really depends on the store, so again, check the label, says Gradney.
āJust because itās made in house doesnāt change the quality. It still boils down to what ingredients are in there,ā she says.
Most packaged breads (whether white, wheat, rye, sourdough, and so on), as well as European-style loaves from the bakery area, are made with enriched wheat flour, from which the wheat kernel's nutritious bran and germ have been removed. Often, the flour has been bleached as well.
If you're looking for whole wheat or another whole grain bread, donāt go by the words āwheat,ā āmulti-grain,ā or "cracked wheat.ā Those don't guarantee much beyond the promise that the bread contains some proportion of wheat flourāand not necessarily whole wheat flour with the full bran, germ, and endospermāat that.
āStone-groundā refers only to the flour-milling process. Some processed breads contain molasses or a coloring that makes them look wheatier than they are.
Breads that are truly whole wheat, whole white wheat (which, nutritionally speaking, is the same as whole wheat), or another whole grain will list that ingredient first on the label, says Cusimano.
āThe key is if that word āwholeā is present,ā says Gradneyāand if itās the predominant ingredient.
Itās made from whole grains that have germinated, or sprouted, and it's a little higher in protein and lower in fat than other breads, says Gradney. The sprouting process burns up carbohydrates and ratchets up the nutrients in the grains, making them more digestible.
There's no doubt sprouted bread is more nutritious than plain white bread, but whether itās markedly better for you than any other whole-grain bread is up for debate.
āThereās not a lot of research to say sprouted grains are definitively better than whole grains,ā Gradney says.
It's subtle (and for the record, either will do when making the best French bread pizza ever). Generally speaking, Italian bread often contains semolina flour and looks more rustic than a scored-top French loaf, says Andy Sasser, coordinator of culinary operations for Whole Foods Market.
A baguette is a long, narrow French bread; ficelle is an even skinnier baguette.
Boule, āballā in French, refers to any round loaf. Miche is a large boule with a substantial crust.
Ciabatta, or āslipper bread," is a wide, flat Italian bread with a porous crumb.
Brioche is a buttery French yeast bread. Challah is an eggy Jewish yeast bread, most often braided.
On your counter, a conventional packaged bread can last, mold-free, for up to two weeks. For more perishable whole grain bread, figure less than a week, says Cusimano.
For a fresh bakery loaf, size determines how quickly itāll go stale: a day for a baguette, up to four days for a large, country loaf. āThe larger the loaf, the longer you can keep it out,ā says Sasser. (Reminder: stale bread is still usable bread.) Keep these crusty breads wrapped in paper, and give them a quick toast or ārefresh,ā as Sasser calls it, prior to eating. And never refrigerate them; theyāll take on a stale quality quicker than if youād just left them out.
But you can absolutely refrigerate packaged bread, especially anything whole-grain, to gain a few days of shelf life. In fact, itās better that you do, experts say.
For longer-term storageāwhich seems incongruous when talking about bread and all those sheet-pan sandwiches in your futureāturn to your freezer. Packaged sandwich bread will keep for three months frozen; bakery bread about a month.
