I Like Bread


I like bread. I know...carbs. I know...empty calories. I know....heart disease and cancer contributing White Death.
But, y'know? We all make choices. I eat no meat other than seafood. I don't smoke. I barely drink. I eat lots of vegetables. I get lots of exercise.
Fifteen years or so ago, I was on a low carb diet. I lost fifty five pounds( and only gained about twenty of it back), so for a long time( six, seven years?) I did not eat bread. Oh, I ate the stuff sold in the stores as low carb bread. And I told people it was pretty good. I lied. It was as if some crazed chemist created some weird concoction out of sponge, sawdust, and melted plastic. And called it bread.
What I'm talking about is real bread, from a bakery( or made at home).
To the best of my knowledge, Renton does not have a bakery that makes bread, other than supermarket bakeries. It's too bad, because I think bakeries really enhance a town or neighborhood. Renton Highlands used to have the Sugar, Flour and More Bakery( which was so good!), but it's been gone for a few years.
Even most supermarkets don't make really good bread. Oh, Safeways' baguette is pretty good, and some supermarkets sell some good stuff from outside bakeries, but it's just not the same as getting a really fresh loaf of great bread right from the bakery. Breads from supermarkets might have a lot of things like dough conditioners and preservatives to give them better shelf life, but not generally better taste.
It's not that Renton doesn't have bakeries. Chuck's and Westernco both make really good donuts. The very well regarded Top Pot Donuts has a branch at Renton's  Landing.  Common Ground in downtown Renton and Small Cakes at The Landing are both purveyors of very popular cupcakes. I'm not much of a cupcake or donut person, but give  me a good bread product like a good pizza crust, covered with sauce and cheese, and I could eat twenty five slices. It's not that I dislike sweet things. It's more that I adore savory things.
Anyway, the picture above is a sampling of the bakery products I've purchased recently. Top left is Sour Rye from the Grand Central Bakery in Burien. Grand Central makes some wonderfully tasty things, from their breads to their cookies to their cinnamon rolls. Sour Rye is also often called Jewish Rye or Deli Rye. Makes a great sandwich.  Kent's Wild Wheat Bakery makes an even better rye bread, but when I'm in Burien, I  get drawn to the bakery as if it were exerting a magnetic force, and there is no point in resisting.   Just to the right of the rye bread is what is called " fresh Pita" found at the Saar's supermarket in Tukwila, a supermarket that sells many interesting ethnic foods from everywhere. There is a Renton Highland's Saar's, but they don't sell this bread there.  This pita bread is a very local product, baked a block or so away from Saar's, by "Ilhan's Fresh Pita" in Tukwila. I'm assuming from the name that it is Somali style Pita. It is different. Warmed up, it was quite yummy. Just a tiny bit sweeter and thicker than Greek or Middle Eastern pita. Below that is an onion bagel from the Whidbey Island Bagel Factory. We were on Whidbey a few weeks back, and I brought some bagels home that I froze. They're not the best bagels in the world, but lots better than bagels that Safeway or Fred Meyer make, and I like them more than the bagels at Tukwila's Seattle Bagel Bakery.
Just to the left of the bagel is a Samoon, or Iraqi pita. They sell them at Renton's DK Market, and they are also a great thing to make a sandwich with. These are baked in Everett, and get delivered to the DK a few days per week. They're very good, but not as good as the Iraqi pita at AlHamdani Bakery in Kent, which also sells lots of varieties of little Middle Eastern pastries. So good!
Bakeries make me happy. Bakeries improve towns and neighborhoods. They make towns and neighborhoods better places.  Do bakeries also make money? I guess some of them do.  They require lots of expensive equipment, and are a labor intensive business. Not for the feint of heart.
But downtown Renton's getting hipper ( and increasingly dense)by the second, and I think a bakery would draw lots of customers, especially if they had good bread.
Or does Renton actually have a good bread bakery, and nobody told me about it?
Note: After I wrote this, I remembered Panera Bread at the Landing. They're okay. There's a zillion of them nationwide. Not in the same league as a real, good local  bakery. They're hardly local. They belong to a very large,  family owned German conglomerate who, in addition to Panera. owns Krispy Kreme Donuts, Noah's and Einstein bagels,  and Peets Coffee, amongst many other companies. It was recently revealed that the family that owns this company  employed slave labor during the World War II. . They say they're sorry. Apologies accepted, but I wish they were a better bakery

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