Bread Sizes!!

Recently my husband brought home some Tuscan Bread from Wegman's.  It was so delicious - chewy and simple, great as sandwich bread or toasted with real butter.  It came in a round "boule" shape, not a long loaf shape.  But the cost of the bread was nearly $7, and we ate it in practically one day.  So I looked online for a recipe.

I found one, which required a pizza stone which I did not own.  So I ordered one, and kept re-reading the recipe so that I would be able to remember how to follow it.  I was grateful for the parchment paper in the cupboard, and the baker's suggestion of using a cookie sheet instead of a pizza peel (which I did not have and hadn't realized was different from a pizza stone!)  So after the hours of waiting for the dough to develop its flavor (that's "its" as in his, yours, hers, etc.), I was able to pop it into the oven, pour the cold water into the rimmed cookie sheet beneath it to create steam for the crust, and wait breathlessly for the finished "loaf."

It was DELICIOUS!!  Enough like the Wegman's brand that I was very happy with my efforts.  I did obey the baker's suggestion to wait until the bread had cooled before cutting into it.  It was worth the trouble it took to bake it.  I found on the second batch that I prefer to cook up all the dough at once and freeze the extra loaves, because the baking is just a little complicated and I prefer to get it all over with at once.

A month or so later I hunted online for the original recipe at theitaliandishblog.com, and found that she had updated one piece of IMPORTANT information!  She no longer "steams" the bread with a cup of water poured into a rimmed cookie sheet BECAUSE she had to have her cracked glass oven door replaced and thinks the steaming is what ruined her oven door.  So that is a change I've made too!

So, today I was looking at The Pioneer Woman's blog, and there were white containers labeled "BREAD" on The Mercantile counter.  Not bread containers for regular loaves of bread, mind you.  No, they are square!  Then I realized that they are for the bakery's round shaped loaves, and for the short, squat, loaves made with electric breadmakers found in so many of our homes.

I grew up with the long metal tin bread box that held a whole loaf of bread, but here is the current style of bread box, square and made of porcelain (I think.)  Does this mean that we don't live on regular sized sandwiches as much as we used to?  Does it mean that we prefer the odd shaped, varieties of breads that are available to us now?  Hmmmm...

This has been a broadcast from "America's changing past."