Well, okay there are a few exceptions, but as a general rule our bread is awful. Bread in the UK is awful, bread in Canada is awful, bread in the USA is awful. I don't really think it's a big stretch to say Aussie and Kiwi bread is terrible either.
Coming from the world's greatest wheat growing nation, you'd think I'd be a bit of a bread buff. Sadly, it's just not the case. There are small exceptions, I'm thinking specifically of Winnipeg -where the standard bread is rye. Canadians haven't exactly led the charge when it comes to baking, although we do control a massive bit of the industry - not just on the supply side. I'm talking to you members of the Weston family (who I'm sure are['t] frequent readers of this blog). I will not be too harsh because I do love the almost all the PC products, especially the Memories Of sauces, and Wagon Wheels (but only really because I had to trade my home made lunch things for them, which in retrospect seems idiotic).
This little tirade has been brought to you because of my trip to the local Russian shop. Dundee has a Russian Shop, yes - who knew? They have all sorts of odd things and a lot of vodka, but they also have Russian bread. Lovely Russian bread that is probably a month old and smuggled via mafia connections in sea containers full of feau-lex watches and trafficked persons. Each bite has so much flavour. I ate it today for lunch with some herring - fantastic.
Now a little dip back in to history tells me that us Britons were once making such bread, simply because we didn't have the climate to grow wheat. All we could grow was oats, barley and rye. It took many years of selective breeding to develop a wheat variety suitable for our cool and damp climate.
I should have really written this a while back after I went to Andrew Whitley's seminar. I shall now plug Mr Whitley and his website which is far more interesting than my rant:
http://www.breadmatters.com/
Also, does anyone know what is up with the large eared bear cub that seems to proliferate Russian stuff? I just drank some juice with him on it. The shop lady tells me he's the bear who likes kindness and drinking milk.
