| San Francisco Bread Review | Albertson's Wheat French bread |
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| Summary | |
| Appearance : | mediocre |
| Taste : | mediocre |
| Overall grade : | C- |
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| The bread | |
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| Wrapper | |
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| Nutrition | |
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| Bread name | Wheat French bread |
| Baker | Albertson's |
| Purchased | Monday, May 5, 2003, 9:00PM |
| From | Albertson's, 1630 High Street, Oakland |
| Tested | Monday, May 5, 2003, 9:30PM |
| Price | $1.49 |
| Weight | 16 oz. |
| Size (LxWxH) | 15" x 5.5" x 3" |
Appearance
The bread comes in a brown waxed paper bag, which is a questionnable decision since waxed paper tends to make bread soggy quickly. The bread crust is relatively light, thin and very soft. This is clearly not a country bread. The whole loaf is quite soft in a Wonderbread kind of way, and you could easily squash it by squeezing it just a bit. This makes it difficult to cut without compressing the whole loaf into a crepe. The body of the bread is light-colored, with a few apparent grains. The substance of the bread is very soft and fluffy. The smell is a bit sour, which is unexpected for this type of bread. The crust at the bottom of the bread was noticeably soggy, which may be due to the waxed paper.
Taste
The crust is somewhat unpleasant because it thin and soft. The taste is banal, or worse. The body of the bread is a bit softer than I would wish. The taste leaves a lot to be desired. There is a distinct sour flavor, which would be expected in a sourdough, but not in a French bread. The aftertaste is not at all pleasant. What little flavor the bread has does not stay, all you are left with is the sour aftertaste. The overall effect is not really pleasant. This may improve by putting the bread in the oven for a little while, but I did not try it (as I believe that good bread should be good regardless of its temperature).
Nutrition
I was surprised to see the high sodium content : 280 mg. per serving (of 1.5 slice or 2 oz.). This seems rather high. The content in dietary fiber is satisfactory (2g.). I don't care much for the supplemental ingredients such as calcium sulfate, ammonium chloride, and L-cysteine hydrochloride. I understand they help in the conservation of the bread (although in this instance they fail rather miserably) but I'd rather have fewer of these.
Conclusion
This bread is a disappointment. The wrapper says that it is baked daily at 4PM, which would mean that the bread I tested was just 5.5 hours old. I seriously doubt that this bread was anything less than one day old. And if it was, that's really bad news for Albertson's because that means this bread sucks almost straight out of the oven... I can only recommend that you avoid it.