As I write this post my mouth is coated in the sour, unpleasant aftertaste
of a sourdough English muffin. It's breakfast: a little butter, a
little Italian honey, and a crunchy muffin. Why is my muffin
sour?
It's sour because in the US, particularly in San Francisco, it's hard
to buy good bread. About 75% of the decent bread in my grocery store,
both fresh baked and industrial, is sourdough. Consumers think
sourdough is shorthand for quality. It's not. In fact, sourdough is
seldom the appropriate bread for a meal. It makes lousy sandwiches,
lousy breakfast, it clashes with cheese. It's good with creamy soups,
and it's good plain with butter. But the premium bakeries all push
sourdough, and so sourdough becomes synonymous with "good", when it's not.
The flipside of sourdough is hideous American industrial bread made
out of sugar. Sugar has no place in bread. OK, maybe a pinch to proof
the yeast. But bread should not be sweet. Pretty much every industrial
bread in my grocery store is sugary; particularly second-rate breads
like hot dog buns. Yuck.