Nearly all "good" bread (from a traditional bakery, made at home by a competent baker) comes with a thick, hard crust. However in every supermarket there are shelves and shelves full of soft (white, brown and everything in between) bread. I want to know how they make such soft crusted bread, and why do they do it?
Is it much cheaper to produce soft bread on a large scale? I've noticed this kind of bread does not go stale, instead it eventually starts going mouldy (my homemade bread goes stale and loses all moisture before mould gets a chance to set in), is this related to the softness, or is this a separate phenomenon due to added preservatives? When did the public start demanding this kind of bread, and why did they move away from the more traditional crusty bread?
Best Answer
I don't know much of the science behind the super-soft bread on supermarket shelves, but I can give some insight into the history that led to it becoming so ubiquitous in the US.
The idea that whiter breads are classier than darker breads goes all the way back to the 5th century BC.
From Zingerman's.com
The desire for soft came a bit later (same source):
It's with the birth of Wonder Bread things really take a turn for the insiped. Did you know you can squeeze an entire loaf into a ball the size of a tennis ball? I once know a guy who never missed an opportunity to show off that little stupid-human-trick...but I digress...
Alexander Taggart, the founder of Wonder Bread, was a marketing genius. In the 1890s he sold the first company that he had built to The United States Baking Company and he accepted stock in The United States Baking Company as a part of the purchase price. The United States Baking Company subsequently became a part of the National Biscuit Company. You might know that company by another name, Nabisco. So at this point he owned a chunk of Nabisco, but he sold that to start another baking company, the Taggart Baking Company, out of Indianapolis, Indiana.
At first he zeroed in on the large number of German immigrants in the area, and prior to WWI he advertised heavily in German language newspapers using a Puritan logo:
From Cluster Mag
This was a good time to own a baking company in the USA. Between the start of the century and the end of WWI, the market was burgeoning.
But events of the era were causing a shift in the attitudes of American consumers. The war and its aftermath caused a tremendous amount of discrimination against German immigrants, and in Indiana, Germans were plentiful enough that there was a significant backlash to those attitudes. To make matters worse, Protestants in Indiana were banding together against Catholics, and the KKK was getting hugely powerful in state politics (an interesting bit of history in its own right Wiki-Indiana Klan). Our marketing genius knew just how to capitalize on the social unrest.
It was the right place and right time for the birth of a product so lacking in character that its very name has become synonymous with lackluster conformity. Wonder Bread's timing was more fortuitous (for them) than even they knew at the time.
When was the last time you heard that something new was "the greatest thing since sliced bread"? At that time, the greatest thing since sliced bread was, well, sliced bread. On November 26, 1928 a patent was filed by Otto Rohwedder of Iowa for a commercial loaf-at-a-time bread slicer.
picture from Mental Floss
The new invention was first used by Chillicothe Baking Company, in Chillicothe, Missouri, for their Kleen Maid sliced bread. But it was Wonder Bread (now owned by Continental Baking) that took it nationwide in 1930. Consumers were intrigued by pre-sliced bread, but were concerned that it would quickly go stale. HA! Wonder Bread, the amazing never-staling bread. How perfect is that?? Incidentally, for a time during WWII commercial bread slicing was banned (only whole loaves could be found on store shelves) due to the steel shortage. The ban caused such outrage that it was lifted only two months later.
During the 1940s it was becoming clear that by being so nutritionally bankrupt, Wonder Bread and its clones were actually causing great harm to the health of the American public. Wonder bread became "enriched" as a part of a government sponsored program to combat certain diseases. It worked, incidents of Beriberi and Pellagra were quickly significantly reduced. Never slow to take advantage of a good marketing angle, Wonder Bread was now advertised as a health food. "Wonder Bread builds strong bodies 8 ways. Look for the red, yellow and blue balloons printed on the wrapper!"
Vintage Wonder Bread Commercial
Once again, the marketing worked.
From The Believer
Thankfully, the trend is reversing. Wonder Bread, the big daddy of them all, has been in financial difficulty for 20 years.
From wherefoodcomesfrom.com
Whole grain breads are just now starting to outsell white bread (by dollar amount), and have nearly closed the gap by unit.
From The Whole Grains Council
Whole grain, multi-grain, Artisan and old-style European breads are back in fashion; cookie-cutter, pillow-soft, white breads slowly losing their grip. Halleluiah!
Epilog
The tastes of the American public are fickle, but those Taggarts are wily. They always come always come out smelling like a rose.
From Cluster Mag