It’s something I find odd when I visit the US. I want some crusty bread to help me fully enjoy my soup but usually get given crackers in US restaurants. Is this practice common outside the US anywhere? It’s not something I heard of until maybe my third US trip.
Canada too. They are nice if you crumble them up and mix them into the soup. YMMV.
I don’t hate them. I’m just not used to them, and generally prefer having bread with soup.
Fair enough. With a good hearty pea soup, bread is my preference. With a thinner soup such as chicken noodle, crackers work well.
Ack! Now I want some pea soup.
Why does one need any bread at all with a good soup?
More accurately, if the soup is good, then it wouldn’t need anything else…
Why does anyone need soup with a good bread?
Why does anyone need cheese on their macaroni?
Why does anyone need to add things to cheese?
American South - cornbread is preferred crumbled in soup. There’s some cracker & soup lovers here too.
My relatives in Louisiana eat soup served over rice.
Either crackers or bread are good. For a nice clam chowder, oyster crackers are preferable. For other soups, when given crackers, there are never enough. I like enough crackers to substantially thicken the soup. Like, two dozen saltines crumbled in.
Joe
Crackers aren’t popular with soup in Spain, no. OTOH, what you do is called sopas de pan (lit. bread soup): it doesn’t refer to a specific recipe, but to the practice of breaking your (crusty, of course!) bread into your soup or milk.
Dad liked sopas de pan with his soup, Middlebro could survive on a diet of milk-based sopas de pan. Me, I only use bread with soup to help me pick up stragglers and wipe up the dish - I don’t like the texture of completely-soaked bread.
ETA: bleagh! M-w has failed me! They translate miga as crumb, but whomever did that was thinking of migas, which is different - it isn’t merely the plural, it means something else. What do you guys call the white part of the bread, the part that’s not the crust?
Answering myself, looks like that’s “crumb” too… don’t think I’d ever heard it used that way, though. Uh.
most americans eat soup only when they’re sick so they prefer crackers to go with their chicken soup. i can’t eat tough bread when i have a fever.
Oh really? A majority of Americans only eat soup when sick? Do you have a cite for that?
It’s baker’s terminology. The soft interior of the bread is the crumb, and the rest is the crust. Crumb means two different things. We’ve designed our language to be as confusing as humanly possible 
Not even 8am and I’ve learned something today.
As to the OP - Canadians like crackers in soup too, especially thin soups like chicken noodle. But this particular Canadian prefers thick soups and a big piece of crusty bread.
It’s the same in Spanish, sort of: miga means the interior of the bread, migas means crumbs (also a dish, made by sautéeing old bread crumbs and adding other stuff to them afterward - serrano and grapes are popular additions, although usually not at the same time) - miga can be one crumb, but you’ll hear it used that way only when your mother points out that “no sir, this plate isn’t perfectly clean! Look! One crumb!” (yes, it’s a joke).
But for some reason I’d learned “crust”, I’d learned “crumbs”, but I’d never learned “crumb”.
I don’t know anyone that would use the word “crumb” for that, I think it’s technical jargon.
‘The soft part of the bread’, ‘the bread part of the bread’, ‘bread’, ‘the middle’, ‘bread minus crust’ - something along those lines, yes, but not “crumb”.
I can’t think of any single word commonly used in American English for it, in fact.
At home we used to ask each other ‘Crust or crumb’ when cutting bread - i.e. do you want a slice from the end of the loaf, or from the inside.
Yeah, crumb is baker-jargon. And, actually, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it used to refer to the middle of the bread, rather than describe the middle of the bread; i.e., I would say, ‘this bread has a nice open crumb’, but I wouldn’t say, ‘I eat the crumb last’.
FYI, open crumb means big holes, closed or tight crumb means small holes (like sandwich bread).