Thick and Packed

This morning I toasted some raisin cinnamon bread. I love good raisin cinnamon bread.

Yesterday my wife stopped by a local bakery on the north side of Jackson and picked up two loaves of bread...whole grain bread comprised of 8 or 9 grains.

This bread feels like a mushy brick. It is thick and packed. I assume this baker has something against light and fluffy. If you make a sandwich out of it, it will take all afternoon to eat it because you will have to gnaw, and gnaw, and gnaw in order to get the bread into a consistency that can be swallowed.

I'm sure that there are people out there who love to be challenged by their bread. I don't.

Take bagels for example. I don't like bagels either. A bagel has always seemed like a baker's botched roll. Apparently he made a lot of them and decided to avert criticism by telling people they were a Jewish delight, knowing folks are less apt to criticize if it is likely to offend a whole race of people. Bagels are hard, thick, and tasteless. Yet people buy them and rave about them. Good for those people. Quite frankly I have never tasted a Jewish dish that enticed me to ask for "seconds".

Back to the bread. I buttered two slices of the raisin cinnamon bread, toasted them and took a bite. After chewing a while, I decided that perhaps my taste sensors weren't awake yet. So I had another bite and chewed and chewed before finally swallowing. Then I did what I should have done to start with. I threw it in the garbage.

Maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy, but I like tasty baked goods that are light, fluffy, and easily chewed. "Thick and packed" best describes good ice cream, not baked goods