Crumb-ageddon

The Soggy Saga of Modern Bread.  Once upon a crustless time, bread was a noble companion. It had backbone – literally. You could slice it, toast it, lather it with butter or jam, and it wouldn’t crumple into a tear-stained heap. It had heft, chew, and dignity – like your dad's handshake. But now? Now we’ve got bread so insipid, so limp-wristed, so tragically bereft of glutenous integrity, it needs counselling after contact with a butter knife.

What fresh hell is this where spreading actual butter – not even lava-hot, just mildly assertive – rips your slice to shreds like you’re performing surgery on wet tissue paper? You try to wield the knife gently, like you’re applying ointment to a newborn hamster, and still it yields, folding pathetically at the edges like it's trying to get out of P.E. And heaven forbid you use cold butter – at that point it’s less a sandwich and more a crime scene.

This isn’t bread. It’s imitation bread essence™. A bleached, air-whipped, joyless sponge designed to last four years in the cupboard and disintegrate the moment it encounters anything firmer than a sigh. It’s been so over-engineered by food technologists in lab coats with clipboards and too many PhDs that they’ve forgotten the first principle of bread: it must hold stuff. Butter. Jam. Cheese. Dignity.

But the supermarkets call it "Farmhouse Batch". Which farm? Chernobyl? Because no self-respecting farm would own up to this pallid, plasticky fluff that sticks to the roof of your mouth like edible cling film. A proper crust? Forget it – the “crust” on modern bread is just the outer edge of despair. Tap it, and it sounds like a deflating balloon. Slice it, and it sheds crumbs like dandruff on a black jumper.

Meanwhile, artisan bread – the real deal – costs roughly the same as a minor surgical procedure. Oh yes, you can get a sourdough loaf that actually resists the knife and carries flavour deeper than "sweetened air", but only if you're prepared to remortgage your house. God help you if you want it sliced – the machine groans, cries a little, and then ejects your loaf looking like it's been mugged.

So we soldier on with this modern muck. Toasted, it turns into carbon in seconds. Untoasted, it’s barely more substantial than foam packing. And yet we dare call ourselves a bread-loving nation?

If you can’t butter your bread without destroying it – it’s not bread. It’s a culinary paper hat masquerading as food. And it’s time we demanded more from our daily loaf. Give us strength, chew, resilience! Give us bread we can spread without triggering a minor existential crisis.

Failing that, pass the croutons – at least they own their crunch.