The U.S. Culture(s) thread

... <looks at all the anime/manga in which a middle/high school student is shown running to school with a slice of toast in his/her mouth> I think that one piece of evidence speaks for itself.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

I don't think it's so much "America doesn't have bread" as it is "some of the stuff sold in America doesn't deserve to be called bread".

When I talk to people who migrated to the US (from wherever they came from) the one thing they always tell me is how hard it apparently is to find decent bread in the US.

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

Which brings me back to [1]

It's one thing to make a spectacle. It's another to make a difference.

Not exclusive to the US.

There are some brands of bread here that I avoid at all cost because even though they are cheap, they taste like they were made of cardboard and sandpaper.

Though we have plenty of local bakeries making fresh bread by the hour so on nearly every corner in Brazil. It ends up as a matter of taste and I recall the bread aisle having a rather varied selection when I was in the US but a distinctive lack of freshly baked goods on the average super market or grocery store.

Or maybe you should look for decent bread in the US on a bakery instead of a grocery store or super market.

Inter arma enim silent leges

store-bought bread in the US is known to be overly sweetened and generally bad as bread.

more like a bad cake.

I've never had a problem with it because I'm not some sort of bread connoisseur.

It's one thing to make a spectacle. It's another to make a difference.

To clear up the confusion: Naturally I know that there is something sold in the US which is called bread. But I happen to be German. And this means that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_in_Europe#Germany

Hence my question....because from a German perspective, American Bread is overly soft, overly sweet and overly tasteless anyway, and the crust of a proper Bread is something so crunchy and tasty, there is no reason to not eat it. Not that I have ever encountered bread in the US which had a proper crust to begin with. Hence my question, because I was really wondering if there is some other kind of bread which has a proper crust I am not knowing about. Because I can't remember a single instance in my childhood of anyone eating bread without crust...especially since the most popular form of bread are so called bread rolls:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_roll

which mostly consist of crust anyway. There is nothing better than biting into one and listen to the crust cracking. Hence my question...because the whole "removing the crust" happens in US-shows and movies all the time and I never got this. This is really a thing with children in the US?

(Btw, don't worry, I'll start to miss the German bread selection in more or less every country, this is not just an US thing)

edited 17th Apr '17 7:52:26 AM by Swanpride

Yeah, it is a thing with kids in the US and Canada and one of my cousin's kids in the UK does it too. It's the same sort of thing as "I don't want different foods touching each other on the plate". The theory I've seen is that when the kid is old enough to want some control over their life, they demand weird minor things so that they don't feel like mere puppets of their parents. The saying "no" to everything is part of that too, but that usually stops after it backfires on them. There's probably a behaviour of that type that shows up in Germany in young kids, even if it isn't the exact same.

Although on the bread thing, I am so glad that my local grocery store here has a full bakery in it. The bread's really good from there, although toasting sourdough bread is a pain because my toaster's pretty small. I have to use the countertop grill.

edited 17th Apr '17 8:26:44 AM by Zendervai

Not Three Laws compliant.

"It's the same sort of thing as "I don't want different foods touching each other on the plate"."

I thought that was an Autism spectrum thing?

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Nah, that is something I know...I always put it down to children wanting to figure out the perfect mix themselves. Plus, there actually are some kind of foods which are an acquired taste.

Since we've veered into discussing American cuisine...has anyone ever had scrapple?

edited 17th Apr '17 8:39:02 AM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised

Nope, but I had Panhas once...not my favourite kind of dish.

I think that and scrapple are the same thing. "Pan rabbit" right?

edited 17th Apr '17 8:47:31 AM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised

As far as I know Scrapple was invented by German immigrants who were inspired by Panhas, so the dishes aren't quite identical but close.

edited 17th Apr '17 8:50:34 AM by Swanpride

Ah, my mistake. Scrapple is also known as pannhaas. I guess the extra "n" and "a" are there for a reason.

Anyway, here's wikipedia's description of scrapple:

Does that sound better or worse than Panhas to you?

edited 17th Apr '17 8:54:51 AM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised

Worse....too much frying for my taste. Plus, at least in Panhas there is a proper German sausage mix.

edited 17th Apr '17 9:05:39 AM by Swanpride

@The Handle: You can be a fussy eater without being on the autism spectrum. Kids being fussy eaters is pretty damned common. I'm.... what even is this comment?

@Swanpride: I have never even heard of anyone asking for the crust to be cut off of a freaking breadroll. It's mostly a thing with bread loaves intended to be used for sandwiches, which is pretty easy to cut and leaves most of the bread for eating. I don't know how you got it into your head that people cut off the crust of rolls.

And it does sound like the question comes from a snobby "America does everything worse than the rest of the world" place rather than "Wow it sure is strange that food is different in this other country" place.

Also, the local Tom Thumb and Target have bakeries/delis inside the store, and I think that's becoming a more common thing for the stores to include that. I do live in a suburb though, so having a separate bakery was not a common thing for me, growing up.

edited 17th Apr '17 9:16:51 AM by AceofSpades

Scrapple sounds like some kind of board game.

It's one thing to make a spectacle. It's another to make a difference.

I'm disappointed it's not a fried pastry involving apples, really. That would probably be delicious.

Yeah, the "no crust" thing is something that small children do with sandwiches, because the crust on common grocery store bread (as opposed to nice bakery bread) is basically just a thin layer of stuff that's not as soft and not as flavorful as the interior of the loaf. If you see anyone older than the age of about ten doing it, it's in order to portray them as either childish or fussy. You'll likely see it from the Manchild, for instance.

And yes, coming into a thread about a specific culture and insulting that culture in the process of asking a question about it is definitely bad form. "Why does America make their bread like that?" is a reasonable question. "Why is American bread shit?" is not. Dismissing American [whatever] as not real [whatever] is textbook No True Scotsman and dumb. Please don't do it.

On the subject of bread more generally, though, America has plenty of tasty varieties of bread beyond the stereotypical grocery store white bread, though not even all Americans are aware of this. Sourdough is popular on the West Coast (and particularly associated with San Francisco), biscuits and cornbread are both types of bread associated with the South, IIRC banana bread (and derivatives) is an American invention, etc etc.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

NC's related liver mush (mashed liver, meat trimmings,cornmeal, and sausage spices) does go rather well with fried onions and apples.

Ah, the talk of bread makes me miss my mom's. Always made homemade wheat and black bread on weekends before she was swallowed up by the damnable glutenEVIL fad. Cornbread is still a staple everywhere here dating back well before Europeans arrived, though most don't lump it in the same sort of category with glutenous baked breads.

edited 17th Apr '17 9:54:32 AM by carbon-mantis

In Afrikaans (a descendant of Low Dutch and cousin to a lot of Low Germans), pan + haas = "pan-hare". So... fake hare-like-thing cooked in a frying pan. See mock turtle, rarebit, crispy seaweed and mock duck.

edited 17th Apr '17 10:11:30 AM by Euodiachloris

To this day, I am still dumbfounded by how what is basically cheese on toast came to be named Welsh rabbit. At least mock turtle soup and panhaas have meat in them.

The recipe makers must have been trolling future generations of cooks.

edited 17th Apr '17 10:12:30 AM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised

It's a joke: cows and goats were easy to rear in Wales in and around the C17th. But, it was among the last places in Britain to be invaded by rabbits from Rome.

Cheese was easy to get for cottagers; rabbits hard (and more expensive when not poached illegally).

edited 17th Apr '17 10:15:05 AM by Euodiachloris

I guess it's a less cruel joke than say, Prairie Oysters.

Disgusted, but not surprised