"Artisan" bread at the grocery store

They are generally very pale. I look but I don't buy.

Jim

soft, too yeasty, yukky

it's my favorite thing to do in the trendy supermarkets.  I peruse their selection of par bakes or weigh their selection of "bake house" produced Artisan breads.  None can compare to a loaf of well made hand-crafted true Artisan bread. 

  That said, I would admit I am working with a local bakery/ doughnut shop to produce a line of Artisan breads, but
I am holding them to a very high standard of quality before I let them call it "Artisan"

Nope.

But the patisserie up the road does a very good miche levain.

My local grocery carries Acme, Semifreddi and a couple other good bakeries' breads.  I'd still rather bake my own.

Glenn

Trader Joe's and Whole Foods feature some nice looking breads.  While in Chicago earlier this winter, we picked up a couple baguettes at TJs, which had good shape, color, and crumb.  Nice ears and a crispy crust.  While they weren't as tasty as my own sourdough, they were still pretty good for "supermarket" bread.

While on my home turf, I never venture into the bread sections of the markets.  I have noticed, however, "artisan" carrots in the veggie section.  Don't understand how a carrot can be "artisan," but that's what the label read.  

But, I don't always have the time (or advanced knowledge of my wife's dinner menu) to bake ahead. When I can, I make a very nice boule or slightly misshapen baguette. When I can't, Whole Foods gets us by.

Without naming specific vendors, there appears to be a couple of vendors which sell bread to the various grocery store + "gourmet" outlets in my neighborhood about an hour's drive of San Fran, CA.   In my opinion, it's a mixed bag.   All of them say, "Authentic San Francisco Sour", but the flavors range widely.  Some are too sour, some are OK, some are bitter, and some have zero flavor at all.

For structure...  again it is / was mixed bag.  On one hand, a decent tasting retail bread would have poor structure (no ears, closed crumb, no spring), but then a bad tasting bread has excellent structure (big ears, open crumb, great spring).   Go figure.   I thought at the time, if we can just mix/match the best people at these bakeries and get them in the same room... we might get a good overall bread. 

Also, though, I noticed most/all of them appeared undercooked -- pale....  slightly gummy...   or over-proofed or something...  not sure why that is.  None have / had a deep bake to them.

Reading the ingredients across all of them, there was only one vendor (insert "gourmet grocery store" here), that actually listed the ingredients as "Flour, Water, Salt, and Starter".  So that was cool at least, but that bread in particular didn't taste like anything -- beautful scoring, oven spring, etc., but no taste.  Could have been cardboard for all I knew.

I shop at New Seasons in Portland. They do make amazing bread: truly artisan and delicious! When I work long stretches of time or am unable to bake bread for another reason, I DO get tempted and DO buy their bread. It is even better than what I make. :)

= sickly pale. If it has a crust at all, it's thick and rubbery - and if you squeeze it hard and let it go again, it springs back to its original size. Amazing what modern enhancers can do!

Karin                                                                    

There are times when we need a decent loaf and my wife works right in the heart of a large shopping suburb...I've coached her to know which places make much better bread than I could ever do at home (or at least, can't do without quitting or changing my day job...)

I think we're lucky because the business-relationship situation may be different here in Japan. Those bakeries which are not 100% free-standing, are almost invariably 'tenants' of the supermarkets and department stores and train stations where they operate. The bakers pay rental for the bakery and a percentage of their sales and are generally expert in certain methods and styles. The good bakeries are often great for basic, rustic white-flour loaves (mostly French styles) that I can't produce on demand with my crazy work schedule. Those 'good' breads are pretty costly, though! I even enjoy the mediocre loaves my wife is forced to buy, sometimes. I'd guess we buy about half of the bread we eat, with no complaints. 

Japanese customers are very particular about their bread, which is a good thing, but their 'preferred' styles are WAY too limited for me. Rye breads, if available, are sometimes a bad joke and the 'ciabatta' is usually about as Italian as Sauerkraut...I do have a lot of complaints about the bakeries in Japan, but that's for a different thread, where I can really RANT!

I prefer home-baked bread (and so does my wife, I believe) but we can buy pretty good stuff almost every day, so we often do so. 

Cheers,

copyu 

I have not found any good bread in Raleigh groceries.  I ran out of rye bread last night an went to the grocery that has some rustic appearing loaves.  The batard had a great shape and good looking ears.  But the taste was totally blah!  It claimed to be fresh out of the oven.  (It was slightly above room temperature.)   The bag said La Brea Bakery, Los Angeles.  In my opinion, Nancy Silverton should be ashamed to put her name with that product.  I wonder, does her bakery par-bake something and ship it to the groceries?   Next time, I just use my own whole wheat bread for the Ruebin sandwich instead of trying to get rye.

Ford

I was surprised that Trader Joe's bread was better than I anticipated. Byerly's and Lunds does have some good bread, but Wal Mart, Target, forget it...I bought an "everything french loaf" at Wal Mart and I had to throw the thing away. It smelled up my kitchen with the most insidious odor of fake or bitter garlic.

Two of my favorite local bakeries sell their bread at some of our local grocery stores in addition to their own outlets:  Madison Sourdough, Madison WI.  and Clasen's European Bakery, Middleton, WI.  Aside from these, I don't buy store brands.

We have some good bread here but not anything truly amazing.

Local bakeries that seem to be stocked almost everywhere are Essential, Grand Central (which is Portland and Seattle) and less widely Macrina. Of those I have to admit I like Essential the least. I've tried a couple of their sourdough loaves and found them to be...not sour. I don't expect much from storebought bread, but if it says sourdough I want sourdough. A tiny bit of tangy aftertaste is not sourdough. I actually buy loaves of Grand Central Como bread for sandwiches if I haven't had an opportunity to bake for a while. And I have only tried the Macrina baguette...meh. I've had a better baguette, but not by much and I've had much worse. That said, I try not to buy any of them for reasons of cost and the fact that I can usually make better at home.

These are truly "artisan" breads. Their main bakery facilities are all within a mile or two of each other just south of downtown, and they happen to be close to my work and also to a few show venues. When going to work late at night or leaving a show, I'll drive or walk by them and see folks busy making the bread by hand around midnight.

Edit: come to think of it I guess we're pretty lucky, here. Most people appreciate good bread and many are willing to pay more for it, so smaller bakeries have survived and thrived. It could be much worse.