| San Francisco Bread Review | Albertson's Garlic Bread |
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| Summary | |
| Appearance : | Mediocre |
| Taste : | Terrible |
| Overall grade : | F |
| Pictures | |
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| The bread | |
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| The wrapper | |
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| Ingredients | |
| Click on the photos for larger view | |
| Bread name | Garlic Bread |
| Baker | Albertson's, Oakland |
| Purchased | Monday, May 19, 2003, 5:30PM |
| From | Albertson's, 1630 High Street, Oakland |
| Tested | Monday, May 19, 2003, 6:15PM |
| Price | $2.49 |
| Weight | 18 oz. |
| Size (LxWxH) | 13.5" x 5" x 3" |
Appearance
The bread comes in a paper/foil bag specially designed to be put in the oven. I also suspect the foil is there to contain the very abundant fat oozing from the bread. This bread is designed to be heated up in the oven at 375 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes, so I followed those directions for this test. The appearance is overall below average, there are flat scores on top, and the color is actually not bad. The loaf is split in two, like a giant sandwich, and the inside is heavily coated with fat, some sort of garlic, and herbs. When hot, the bread itself smells OK, although these is no real garlic smell that I could detect -- the smell is entirely of hot fat. The cut was quite difficult because the bread is very soft when hot, and of course it is split in two, so I found it pretty much impossible to make nice-looking slices. The crumb looks white and somewhat fluffy. The inside smell is strongly dominated by that of the cheap fat inside.
Taste
The crust has a very mediocre taste. The crumb is mostly soaked in fat, and I could not detect any trace of garlic taste -- it's all cheap fat taste.
Ingredients
This bread definitely needs a special section on ingredients. Put simply: it's horrible. Horrifying. There are more artificial ingredients in this bread than I have ever seen anywhere, with well over a dozen additives. Frankly, Albertson's should be ashamed of putting out a product like this.
Conclusion
I find no redeeming qualities in this bread whatsoever, so it gets the dubious honor of being the first bread to get an F.