September 11, 2017

I really just wanted to know if Whole Foods has ciabatta today. They don't always have it.

I'm not confusing it with art, but I am a little confused about finding the answer to my question on the internet. I mean, my search found me this:
That's from "All The Houses: A Novel," by Karen Olsson.

42 comments:

Gahrie said...

What's wrong with Wonder bread?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Good bread is art. innit?

buwaya said...

Ciabatta is peasant bread.

Or, at least, petit-bourgeois bread.

The American problem is that the American haut-bourgeois hate their own peasantry and all their works.

So they imagine that foreign peasants are more acceptable, for some reason.

buwaya said...

San Francisco is such that our local market has fresh Ciabatta EVERY DAY WITHOUT FAIL.

And its not Whole Foods.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

You can't buy your Whole Foods ciabatta through your Amazon portal yet?

Crimso said...

Soooo......do they fucking have it or not?

tim maguire said...

Ciabatta is not culture. That may be about the soundest thing I've read about Whole Foods culture.

Nonapod said...

Ciabatta's great, but there's a tendency for formation of really bad "room(s) where the baker sleeps".

Grant said...

Fortunately, unlike most art, ciabatta freezes very well. I usually have a loaf in the freezer for those crisis moments.

rhhardin said...

Check out Munger and Roberts on what happens with paying for fair trade coffee

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/12/munger_on_fair.html

Like every leftist plan it works opposite from the intention.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

rhhardin said...

Like every leftist plan it works opposite from the stated intention.

FIFY

Bob Ellison said...

Kind of impressive that your Google search turned up a JPEG of text on an obscure subject. Maybe there is something to AI after all.

David-2 said...

If your Whole Foods is like the Whole Foods near me don't bother trying to find anything there today. The Whole Foods near me has been near trashed for two weeks - since the Amazon.com takeover. Shelves empty of certain products and in complete disarray. They've apparently had an incredible surge of business. Maybe it's because bananas are now 49¢/lb each instead of 79¢/lb each. Hopefully they'll get it sorted in the next few weeks.

It was amusing walking around in the store this weekend and seeing lots of shelves with "new low price" markers on lots of items. I don't believe I've ever seen a single such shelf marker in a Whole Foods before!

Fernandinande said...

Blogger Gahrie said...
What's wrong with Wonder bread?


Well, both places in town were out of it so I had to get Sara Lee.

True story!

David said...

Stock market go boom!

Left Bank of the Charles said...

Starbaucks at the supermarlet now has a sign saying that only 3% of the world's coffee is good enough for Starbucks. I don't drink coffee much as it's hard to get the lukewarm temp I like without having to wait 20 minutes, so I'm even more discerning than Starbucks.

RMc said...

If you're a female artist (or just female and not an artist), the only way to get people to take you seriously is to use the F word as much as possible.

Quaestor said...

There may be an amusing anagram in All the Houses: a Novel, as in "Althouse novellas" but funnier.

And who puts "a Novel" into the title of a novel? Somebody desperate for recognition as a novelist, one supposes. Think I'll try a variation...

An Epic Poem by Quaestor

wildswan said...

What about sourdough bread? Is that culture? Is it a good culture or a bad one? How can we find out? Who has the crust to say that one culture is better than another?

Fernandinande said...

wildswan said...
Who has the crust to say that one culture is better than another?


Don't drag yogurt into this.

AlbertAnonymous said...

Interesting...

So Ciabatta is art, yet the poor guy from Masterpiece Cakes has to go to the SCOTUS to see if his wedding cake creations will be called art?

buwaya said...

"What about sourdough bread? Is that culture? Is it a good culture or a bad one? "

Its San Francisco, so its culture by definition.
My wife bakes bread every three days or so, keeping her sourdough culture going.

Quaestor said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Quaestor said...

Got one (sorta): shaven Althouse olé!

tcrosse said...

Gluten must no longer be out of fashion with the bien pensants.

Humperdink said...

Speaking of culture, I buy Amish bread, $2.00/loaf. It is the best bread I have ever tasted. I eat it for breakfast and for an evening snack. My Amish friend only bakes bread on Thursday.

My stepson and his spouse are on a non-sugar diet, so (most) bread is out. So I asked my Amish friend how much sugar she puts in per loaf. One tablespoon/loaf. Insignificant in my opinion.

Ralph L said...

Aldi has ciabatta everyday but I haven't tried it yet. So far, the only thing I've bought from them that I didn't like was the mayo.

Henry said...

Sounds tense.

Laslo Spatula said...

The novel'sdescription from the link:

"After her father’s heart attack and subsequent surgery, Helen Atherton returns to her hometown of Washington, D.C., to help take care of him and, perhaps more honestly, herself. She’s been living in Los Angeles, trying to work in Hollywood, slowly spiraling into a depression fueled by hours spent watching C-SPAN---her obsession with politics a holdover from a childhood interrupted by her father’s involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal.

The rest of the world might have forgotten it, but the Atherton family never quite recovered. With sharp, witty, and suspenseful prose, All the Houses reveals their story, as Helen pieces together the political moves that pulled her family apart."

I guess this is what you read while waiting for Hillary's book to come out.

I am Laslo.

Michael K said...

In Boston, when I was a medical student, we used to get fresh Italian bread from a small bakery just by the Old North Church run by a woman with one arm. It was 25 cents a loaf and it was so good we would take it back to the apartment and eat the whole thing with butter while it was still warm.

Years later, about 13 years later, I took the kids on a tour of the east coast and we went to Boston. We went to the old bakery but it was gone. No more bakery. I was disappointed I could not show them how good that bread was.

In 1995, 17 more years later, the kids were back there for my graduation from Dartmouth with a Masters in health policy. We went by the Old North Church and I looked to show them where the bakery had been. It was there ! The same woman, now with gray hair, was running the bakery and told me she had gone back to Italy for a few years. She was now back and in the same shop. Maybe her family owned the building.

The bread was just as good.

Greg Hlatky said...

If ciabatta was unavailable to the deplorable classes it would be fine.

Narayanan said...

Aldi owns trader joes who has good bread.

tcrosse said...

Aldi owns trader joes who has good bread.

It depends where you live. In MN they had great bread. In NV, not so good.

peacelovewoodstock said...

I prefer pugliese but of course it is just a matter of personal taste, nothing to do with culture.

The "she" in the passage from the novel needs some time with a therapist.

On the other hand, it is conceivable that there are people who would buy ciabatta not because they have any fondness for it, but for appearances, so they can be seen buying ciabatta, and so that they can tell people about the ciabatta that they bought.


tim in vermont said...

I would have given odds that that was somebody kvetching about Althouse.

"What's wrong with Wonder Bread?"

Man.... I grew up on homemade bread baked from a recipe and techniques passed down by my Grandma, who was. born on an farm in 1880. Us kids were the envy of the neighborhood when that smell wafted down the street. But as far as store bought bread? I guess Wonder Bread is as good as any.

Big Mike said...

Ciabatta may be fashionable, but there are tastier rolls in my opinion.

Laslo Spatula said...

The Volkswagen Ciabatta was a nice car.

I am Laslo.

Rusty said...

I just want to know where I an get a decent baguette around here. Trader Joes used to have the best around, nice crisp crust, chewy bread with plenty of air pockets, yum. Now all you can get is that ciabatta shit that tastes like dried paper mache.

dbp said...

My grandmother, an off the boat peasant from Southern Italy, used to bake ciabatta. She just called it bread. She also made a lot of focaccia, which she called pizza.

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

Bake your own. You have plenty of time now that you are "retired." Just start a day ahead of time.

1/16 teaspoon of yeast for a two loaf batch. What for sugar? Just flour, water, yeast, some salt to slow down the yeast. Don't try to push more than 1/3 whole wheat flour. General purpose flour works better than high gluten bread flour. Get you an old cast iron slab, like a stove-top griddle, for a baking stone.

Professional lady said...

I think Starbucks makes terrible coffee. My sister in law brought some for us from Seattle years ago before there were the cafes everywhere. Tasted burnt and I threw it out. Haven't had it since.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Wonder Bread is so ghetto.