It’s lunchtime where I am so I’m thinking about sandwiches and when I think of sandwiches, I think of bread–in particular, sourdough bread.
Sourdough bread is associated with San Francisco and is pretty common throughout in sandwich shops (except in chains like Subway), delis, and supermarkets in Northern California, the Pacific Northwest, and Alaska. Where I live, you can go into your typical supermarket and find numerous brands of sourdough bread sold by a couple large commercial bakeries, several local/regional artisan bakeries, and the store’s own bakery section.
So how common is sourdough bread in other parts of North America (or even the UK)? Is its easy availability pretty much limited to the Western United States? Has it caught on in any of the delis on the East Coast? Does it taste any differently?
We need to go to the larger towns, 20 minutes away or more, to find it. Local grocers on occasion carry something they call sourdough, but it ain’t so.
Damn, now I’m hungry for sourdough, toasted with butter, marmite, 5 year old cheddar with tomatoes and onions.
It’s ubiquitous here in San Jose. I once spend twenty minutes in a Hawaiian supermarket trying to find sourdough bread to make sandwiches, before I finally realized they didn’t have any. Same thing in Virginia on a visit to an in-law.
My relatives that live out of the area will usually buy multiple loaves when they come here.
Panera Bread sourdough is one of the cornerstone of their business. There are about 1500 Panera locations in the U.S., so they’ve been a big popularizer of sourdough.
The map shows Paneracovering most of the Eastern half of the U.S., and with a middling presence along the Pacific coast.
Other than Panera, there isn’t major sourdough availability in Missouri. Trader Joe’s offers it, and the big supermarkets usually have a sourdough craft loaf, but it’s a tiny part of their stock.
It’s not a big menu staple here in Kentucky, but it’s not unknown. Grocery stores carry it. I don’t care for it myself and have never bothered to make it, though I like the idea of it.
Pepperidge Farm offers a sourdough sandwich loaf in New England, at least. Probably a felony to mention it in the same sentence as San Fransisco bakery sourdough, but its decent enough for a sandwich.
I have to say, the commercial breads offered in supermarkets are far, far better than was available only twenty years ago, to say nothing of my youth in the early '60s.
Los Angeles - Until a friend visited from Australia and had never heard of it, I had no idea that it wasn’t ubiquitous worldwide, just as common as regular white bread and three times as tasty.
Now you say that there are places here in America where you can’t get sourdough? Oh those poor poor people!
Available at grocery stores with bakeries, Cracker Barrel stores, and at Panera, all of them found in larger towns about 20 miles from me. Not an option at local sandwich shops. the Pepperidge Farm version is in most grocery stores but isn’t very good.
I bake my own sourdough with a starter I brought back from Alaska.
It’s available in at least a half-dozen varieties in any major grocer in Colorado. Safeway has a store brand that they bake fresh in the store that is outstanding.
This surprises me, but depends on where they come from. Here in Melbourne sourdough is very common (most cafes offer it with breakfast, the major supermarket chains offer in in their bakery sections), with Melbourne particularly popular amongst artisan bakers (Dench, De Chirico, La Madre etc) as apparently the local yeast is excellent for sourdough according to Dan Lepard(the Piedmont supermarket mentioned is one of my locals, must try the pane di rosetta he mentions!)