Placement of fire brick on cooking floor

[jengineer]

ah I was think more along the lines of starting a new thread in the Bread section and then cutting and pasting the pertinent quotes from this thread - brute force rather than finesse

[CanuckJim]

James,

In Canada, we get about the same crummy bread as you do in the US, with a few exceptions. I'd have to agree that this has to do with supermarkets, shelf life and just a few dominant players in the market. I work with a man whose favourite sandwich is bologna, ballpark mustard and Wonder Bread. He thinks I'm nuts doing what I'm doing.

Canada's colonial past is quite recent, and we seem bent on still emulating Old Blighty, including insipid bread. Nothing, however, beats the junk sold in England as bread: kind of a cross between cotton balls and window putty.

Of course, supermarkets now have their own "in house" bakeries: same old stuff, just different shapes. Too, so called artisan bread has begun to pop everywhere. Same stuff, different shapes.

The exceptions have to do with the number of immigrants we have here, mainly from Portugal and Italy, and to a lesser extent Germany and Scandanavia. In the city, small bakeries serving these communities still exist, and it's possible to get quite decent traditional breads made by these bakers.

That's not a theory, really. Seems to me that bread has become an envelope. It's not important; what's important is what you put in it. Errr.

Jim