So, I stop at Target this morning for a loaf of bread---zero, zilch. I asked the red shirt clerk

angak1

Well-known member
where did they move the bread and was told that they no longer sold bread---their one supplier was the Hostess bakery and you know the rest. They said they were working on getting a new supplier. slim pickings up here. I have some nice hearty Dave's seedy bread, but I need to have soft white bread for my meatloaf sandwich. I'll just have to wait till a trip to Safeway tonight. that wait will make my sandwich taste even better tomorrow.

 
I was going to say the same thing Steve, but then I remembered about the squishy, bread

Haven't had any of it for years, but I do remember a restaurant behind the building I worked in that had the best roast beef sandwiches on white bread with gravy and mashed potatoes. It was just a greasy spoon, but they sure had good food.

 
gotta have it with meatloaf sandwiches. Target is on my way to work, just outside the east gate of

the AFB. I have plenty of Dave's hearty seed bread and whole wheat tortillas for wraps, but I just had the need for the squishy stuff.

 
Steve, you would never know the love of soft white bread unless you grew up eating hard rye---

on sandwiches taken to school. oh the shame when surrounded by fluffy white bread sandwich lunches with snack cakes and snack size potato chips. I felt like such an oddball. those rye bread sandwiches would be a welcome lunch these days, but my fascination for soft Wonder bread comes up about once a year.

 
Ang, I think you would really enjoy this recent essay from the LA Times

with a similar sentiment about rye bread and the soft fluffy snacks in school lunches:


OP-ED
My Hostess envy
I craved Twinkies, Wonder Bread and Ho Hos while eating seeded rye.

By Amy Goldman Koss
November 21, 2012

In my childhood, Hostess snack foods loomed as the symbol of freedom. Freedom from the cruel health food regimen and ethnic dietary peculiarities of my keepers. Freedom to eat and dance and flirt and wear loafers and be cute and silly and utterly American.

While I trudged the three blocks to Zeman's bakery for a loaf of salted and seeded rye wrapped in brown paper, I knew that happy, free girls were out there digging into plastic polka-dotted bags of Wonder Bread, selecting two perfect slices as soft as clouds. They would then roll the bread into white balls, or spread peanut butter and jelly on them. Even a single slice of baloney looked lovely and pure on Wonder Bread. These lucky girls didn't even need teeth! They could eat using only their tongues against the roofs of their mouths.

Rye bread required not only teeth, and jaws, but determination. Rye bread was no laughing matter.

Sometimes the hair-netted lady at Zeman's let me pick a treat from the cookie counter. I'd chose between prune and poppy-seed filling, contained in dough so dry it screamed for milk. Or sometimes, I'd opt for the round cookies with a small dab of red jelly in the center, which my dad called "bloody sores."

These pastries did not giggle or float or bounce or look like happy coconut breasts. They had no cream filling or anything else soft and silly. The desserts of my childhood were level-headed and serious. The worldview of Hostess fun food hadn't entered my parents' consciousness, let alone their diet. Frozen peas, and a few other time-saving Sputnik foods, made it through our front door. But Twinkies? Never.

The girls at school who had Wonder Bread sandwiches and Hostess cupcakes in their lunches were the very same girls who didn't have to wear heavy, clunking oxfords for their arch support. The TVs were on in their houses while they ate dinner, and they were allowed soda pop, pizza, potato chips and store-bought cake at their birthday parties. Their moms wore makeup and heels and nail polish, and their dads joked with us. And many of them got their hair cut by actual beauticians.

I envied every single thing about them, including that they didn't seem to realize what amazing lives they had. They were entirely casual about having not just the occasional Twinkie as a super treat after hours of pleading, while facing brain surgery or because a dog had died. All they had to do was help themselves from boxes kept in their own kitchen cupboards and replenished every week!

So what happened to all those happy Hostess Twinkie and Ding Dong girls? Didn't they grow and multiply, ensuring that ever more boxes of Ho Hos made it to shopping carts and kitchen cabinets? It doesn't seem possible that in the battle of prune filling versus fluffy cream, the prune won. But why else would Hostess Brands be closing 36 plants and threatening to fire 18,500 bakery employees? Or be talking about chopping up the company and selling the treats piecemeal, the Twinkie recipe here, the Wonder Bread recipe there?

As a child, I assumed that the moment I was a free adult, doing my own grocery shopping, with my own money, I'd fill my cart and home with Hostess everything. But somewhere along the line I forgot to do so. And now, given the possible liquidation of the company, I realize I've probably missed my chance.

The news talks of unions and strikes and fiscal mismanagement, but perhaps the problem was that I wasn't the only girl whose head was turned by more sophisticated pastries and possibilities. The Pepperidge Farm Milano, say, or even Trader Joe's lemon tart.

Nonetheless, the potential loss of the Hostess Brand makes me melancholy for the kind of adulthood I'd intended to grow into, and for the little girl whose dreams of a Wonder Bread future never came true.

Amy Goldman Koss' latest novel for teens is "The Not-So-Great Depression.



http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-koss-hostess-20121121,0,4509489.story

 
We grew up in the same neighborhood.

I was one of the "free" girls. My mother, rebelling from her restrictive upbringing, embraced the fluffy life. Ms Goldman (I believe she and my youngest brother were high school classmates) and I apparently each thought the other's pasture was greener. The occasional loaf of rye bread was a treat to me. As my path to adulthood was never adequately close to a bakery making a good Jewish rye, I now make my own. I do skip the egg white glaze on the crust and rely on steam for just the right chew without excessive hardness. BTW, I never cared for Twinkies but would eat an occasional Hostess chocolate item. Further, I have a pound of poppy seeds in my freezer waiting to become strudel filling.

 
No drug tests on my horizon.

Unless the mortgage company doing my refi wants one. I wouldn't be surprised!

 
Oh my, this is me, if I could write. or my twin separated at birth and growing up in the same kind

of home. I now reach for the rye bread first,and actually had some party rye and smoked liversausage sandwich snacks on Saturday. I just remember so vividly the longing for those soft white bread sandwiches. and Twinkies. and snack size bags of Fritos or Jays potato chips.

 
I always wanted those lovely foil-wrapped Ding-Dongs, and Lay's potato chips, neither

one of which ever showed up at our house.

 
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