Friday, April 16, 2010

Bread

I like bread. I bet you like bread. Everyone likes bread. Man shall live by bread alone, that's what God said, and I bet God likes bread. That is what he said right?

There was an interesting documentary on BBC4 last night before the election debate nonsense about the history of bread...wait, come back...honestly, it was really interesting; it's such a simple, everyday commodity but, like so many everyday things, it has a very interesting back story.

For instance, did you know, (if you're of a certain age you will), that in rationing times, the government forbade (WE FORBADE, they would intone to the nation), the selling of fresh bread to stop people eating too much of it? "Give 'em day old hard stuff and they'll only eat what they need," was their ration(ale). What a world it was.

Still, bread is expensive now. It's often £1.39 a loaf of squashed white or brown from a convenience store. I remember at Cardiff when it was 79p a loaf. I went to that Spar to buy that bread for three years and the women behind the till never acknowledged me as a regular, dammit.

I hate bread that doesn't fit in toaster and worse of all has a hole, that often runs through the entire piece of bread (i.e. each slice), up at the top...do you know what I mean, it's hard to explain...that annoying hole at the top that breaks the bread in two. Drives me mad.

My favourites breads are browns, baguettes, olive bread but sometimes nothing beats a clean white bread sandwich with nothing but fresh cheddar cheese. Mmmmm, lunch time!

2 comments:

Kate said...

I gave up bread for lent last year - it was really hard but worth doing because I ate loads more interesting things. But now I'm back in the bread zone and it's toast three times a day.

Baking my own bread is my favourite, but I'm very lazy so I don't often get round to it.

Unknown said...

What did you eat instead of bread then? I can't imagine not eating bread, that's impressive.

I've never made my own bread. Maybe one day though.

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