Why is generic white bread so soft and mushy?

Yes the generic loaf of white bread probably available almost worldwide in groceries, you know stuff like Wonderbread.

I realized recently why it sucks so much, it is the texture. It is wet, soft, and mushy, it tastes like it hasn’t been cooked enough and is excessively wet.

As toast it makes a decent sandwich, or as a grilled cheese. But otherwise it sucks because it is just too mushy as sold.

Why on earth don’t they cook it a little longer?

(cue the accusations of SNOB!)

EDIT:ALL other types of bread are not as mushy, ALL. The only other bakery product I can think of as soft as white bread is pasty or cake.

The white bread is made like that on purpose. Back in the day white bread was the fancy stuff compared to the coarse tough bread available to most of our peasants. Okay, I exaggerate a bit. Thanks to the modern miracles of technology we now have affordable white bread that’s pumped full of preservatives meaning it won’t mold or go stale the day after we open it.

Cheap bread is also designed to include as much air as possible. Air is free. The more air in your bread, the less actual ingredients you have to pay for.

My mother, who’s in her 90’s, talks about when she was growing up, particularly during the Depression, Wonder-type white bread was something she and her brothers craved. It was, indeed, “fancy” bread that only the rich people ate. Everyone else (the not rich) had to make their own bread, using whatever they could find. Often it was mixtures of several types of flour.

When I was a kid, all of our bread came from a small, family owned Italian bakery a few blocks away. I went to grade school with the children of the owner, and they were just neighborhood people. The bread was amazing.

That small, family owned bakery is now a huge company Rotellas Bakery

They bake bread 24/7 and ship it out all over the midwest. They have a soft and mushy style of sandwich bread to appeal to the masses, but their twist bread is crusty and delicious. It is almost as good as the days of the neighborhood bakery.

I am 61, and the bread in my kitchen is still Rotella’s I have been eating it all my life…

What’s worse is that they now make 12-grain and other healthy/hearty varieties the same way.

There used to be a localish brand (Freihofer’s) that made non-mushy bread, but my usual supermarket no longer carries it. Just the other day I looked for their website to see if they’d gone out of business or whatever – all I could determine was that there’s no store within 20 miles of me selling it.

Guess I’m going to have to buy bakery bread more often – luckily I live in a big city with several really good bakeries.

Didn’t they make a bread they called “Wheaty Wheat”? Seems to be discontinued, like most food products I grow fond of.

Hey there, Son of a Rich!

Try their Wheat Berry line. I think you will like it.

I always assumed that the preservatives were the reason for the “softness” of the bread. The preservatives may be natural and innocuous, but they give the loaf a different texture from the “only good for a couple of days” bread.

It will during the hot, muggy Arkansas Summer. :slight_smile:

There are other white breads that are not as mushy as Wonderbread (or Bimbo). Even regular Pepperidge farms white bread is not as mushy as Wonder , but there are also packaged white breads called “’ Country White” or “Farmhouse White” etc. Not as good as bakery bread, but it beats Wonder

As a kid, I’d tear the crusts off a slice of white bread, then squish the whole thing into a doughball to nibble on while watching TV.

Now I’m fairly sure that real food doesn’t do that.
To answer the OP: they make bread that way because for some reason people like it.

Orowheat makes a respectable Country White. Or eat sliced sourdough. It’s the best thing since sliced bread. Oh wait…

Well, to a certain point. Bread is sold by weight - typically 1 and 2 pound loaves. There isn’t any less ingredient in a 1-pound loaf of Wonder Bread than in a 1-pound brick of Uncle Moe’s 7-grain Colon Jammer.

But the air does make bigger loaves, which has a lot of shelf appeal.

I recently took a couple of bread-baking classes and my instructor told us “never refrigerate bread.” She said that bread goes bad faster when refrigerated.

I specifically asked about Wonderbread, and she said, yes, it’s okay to refrigerate things like Wonderbread, because, compositionally, Wonderbread is more like cake than bread.

So your answer is in your question. Wonderbread is cake-like, because it’s intentionally cake-like. It’s like cake, because it’s cake.

it can be rendered slightly better by letting the slices you want to use air dry for a bit or a run through the toaster on the lightest setting for the shortest time.

also its airiness can be utilized in spreading a smooth low-viscous substance in it like a warm thin jelly, honey or cheese spread. it can fill the pores of the bread without adding dimension or spill-off and still have significant flavor.

I knew it! I’ve observed this in my own kitchen, but assumed my kitchen had different laws of nature.

She’s talking about freshly baked bread. Ordinary sliced loaf bread that you get wrapped in plastic at the supermarket bread aisle can be refrigerated, particularly to delay mould.

wrapping bread in plastic traps moisture which will accelerate mold. sliced bread like Wonderbread is wrapped instantly.

when home bread making was more popular people would store the bread in breadboxes which had a small amount of ventilation.

refridgerators are damp places.

I’ll try it. Thanks! :slight_smile: