If "other countriers" is "the UK" [which you mentioned in another comment] then that makes perfect sense: UK bread is uniformly shite, whether artisanal or not, so much so that I can tell you the one place where I've had decent bread in the last ten years (a sandwich shop in Canary Warf, in the train station; don't know if it's still there).
The bread I make at home is order of magnitudes better than any of the bland, dead, oversalted bread I get at local supermarkets in the UK. And I'm nowhere near a baking enthusiast, I just make it at home so I can eat tolerably good bread.
But try, say, France, or Italy, or Spain, or Greece. Just go to a bakery -if you can figure out which ones make the dough in house (in France there are rules for this). And then we can talk about mass-produced German sourdough.
Although I bet the Germans make great pumpernikel.
Yes, the UK is part of the other countries. However, I managed to get good bread in London. So it's not completely uniformly bad; just generally bad.
(They had some great Ficelle at a small bakery in one of those markets under the rail arches near the Bermondsey beer mile. I think it was 'Little Bread Pedlar', but don't quote me on this. Their other baked goods were also tasty. But this was in 2017.)
> The bread I make at home is order of magnitudes better than any of the bland, dead, oversalted bread I get at local supermarkets in the UK.
Interesting that you complain about oversalting. We put quite a lot of salt into our wheat/rye-mixed sourdough here in Singapore; partially for taste but also partially to retard the rapid fermentation you get in the local climate.
> But try, say, France, or Italy, or Spain, or Greece. Just go to a bakery -if you can figure out which ones make the dough in house (in France there are rules for this). And then we can talk about mass-produced German sourdough.
You can also get artisanal bread in Germany, and you can get arbitrarily fancy there. If you are in Berlin, try Domberger Brotwerk. (Their yeasted cakes and (open) sandwiches are also great.)
You can get decent-ish bread in the countries you mentioned, though I think it's all rather white and wheat-y? I prefer at least some rye mixed in. (So I might prefer a German factory produced Mischbrot over an artisanal white wheat; even though the latter might be a better example of its style.)
My point is not that German factory produced bread is the best bread ever. It is not. My point is that it's decent. Decent enough to deny the statement 'and yet the food industry hasn't mastered the sourdough.'
>> However, I managed to get good bread in London. So it's not completely uniformly bad; just generally bad.
Well, OK, you can find good bread if you get lucky and look for it really hard, but the thing is that the British don't really understand what good bread means. I'm sorry to be racist. I find the same thing about coffee and about most food. The British... they try, right? London is full of posh restaurants. But I really don't think they get it.
>> You can get decent-ish bread in the countries you mentioned, though I think it's all rather white and wheat-y?
You get a whole lot more than "decent-ish" bread in the countries I mentioned! And you don't need to go looking for "artisanal" bread. To my understanding that's a term that's applied to bread made in the UK or US because ordinary bread sucks. But the same is not needed in, e.g., France where there are rules for "pain tradition" ("bread made to tradition"; nothing to do with BDSM :| ) that basically enforce that the bread is made by the baker on the day it is sold. This is a French language site that explains the rules:
To summarise, the dough can't be refrigerated, the bread must be baked on premise and then there's some restrictions on the ingredients (e.g. no additives except fungal amylase).
Btw having rules like that is a very French thing. The French (well, some of them) are very picky about their food and so they have all sorts of standards like AOP (which was a French thing before it was an EU thing) for cheese, wine, pork products and everything else that you can eat really. And that's a good thing and it works: you really should try the bread in France. I get the feeling you haven't - no offence.
Other places like Italy and Greece may not have the same stringent rules so you find more variation (as in all things- e.g. coffee: good in Italy and Greece, passalbe in France, I wouldn't drink it in Belgium or Germany) but for whatever historical and cultural conditions in those countries you're very likely to get very good bread in any random bakery you walk in to.
Like you say white is the mainstay, but in Greece I find that in the last few years that has changed a good deal. Even out in the boondocks where I stay you can find like six or seven varieties of bread per bakery, with white the minority really. My local area has three bakeries, wall-to-wall and the two sell wholemeal, spelt and rye, with and without sourdough. That's partly thanks to the many Albanians who have migrated to Greece in the last few decades and who are master bakers (and stone masons to boot). Also: heavenly pies. Oh man. Now I want one of the "kourou" spinach pikelets with spelt from the Albanian bakery and I'm stuck in the UK :(
Btw, that Albanian bakery also makes bread without salt. In a couple different varieties. I've tried their wholemeal sourdough (I have family with health issues so). Not great but eh, it's without salt. Greece gets very hot in the summer (40+ degrees is unsurprising) but the salt-less bread works just as fine. After all, this is modern times: we can control the temperature and humidity of enclosed spaces, yes? Salt is not needed for preservation anymore, it's now only there for the taste. So I'm very suspicious of industries that claim they can't reduce the salt content of their products "because preservation". As far as I'm concerned, any such claims make me suspicious of a cover-up; specifically that extra salt is used to cover up poor ingredients and poor production.
The term you are looking for might be something like 'culturalist'?
> France where there are rules for "pain tradition" ("bread made to tradition"; nothing to do with BDSM :| ) that basically enforce that the bread is made by the baker on the day it is sold.
Yes, but that's still white wheat bread.
> To summarise, the dough can't be refrigerated, the bread must be baked on premise and then there's some restrictions on the ingredients (e.g. no additives except fungal amylase).
We do some of these things at home, they don't prevent you from making good bread.
> Btw having rules like that is a very French thing. The French (well, some of them) are very picky about their food and so they have all sorts of standards like AOP (which was a French thing before it was an EU thing) for cheese, wine, pork products and everything else that you can eat really. And that's a good thing and it works: you really should try the bread in France. I get the feeling you haven't - no offence.
I've had French bread. It's good for what it is, but it's rather limited. They don't even like rye.
These mandatory rules seem a bit silly to me. (The Germans also really like them.) If you want to make something that conforms to some arbitrary rules, you should be allowed to and be allowed to label it as such, but other people should also be allowed to use whatever ingredients and processes they like.
(I'm still sore about Bavaria forcing their beer purity law on our tasty North Germany beers. But I guess that was the concession we made to get them to join the Prussian-led German Reich.)
> Btw, that Albanian bakery also makes bread without salt.
Yeah, that's a mistake in my opinion.
> Not great but eh, it's without salt.
You seem to think being without salt is a benefit?
(From what I can tell, there are some people with specific health problems for whom salt might be a problem. But normal healthy people do just fine with salt, as long as they drink enough liquids---which the salt makes you want to do naturally anyway. Salt is especially important in your diet if you sweat a lot.)
> After all, this is modern times: we can control the temperature and humidity of enclosed spaces, yes? Salt is not needed for preservation anymore, it's now only there for the taste.
Well, if you want to live in harmony with the local environment, you'll go with salt rather than aircon. So in addition to helping slow down the fermentation, the salt and sourness also help our bread last longer once it's baked here in Singapore.
The bread I make at home is order of magnitudes better than any of the bland, dead, oversalted bread I get at local supermarkets in the UK. And I'm nowhere near a baking enthusiast, I just make it at home so I can eat tolerably good bread.
But try, say, France, or Italy, or Spain, or Greece. Just go to a bakery -if you can figure out which ones make the dough in house (in France there are rules for this). And then we can talk about mass-produced German sourdough.
Although I bet the Germans make great pumpernikel.