I am partial to the odd pre-made packaged sandwich from a service station or supermarket. Its not out of convience or my own inability to make a decent sandwich (im quite good at sandwichs) its because the bread is different to most other types of commercially avialable loaves. What im talking about is Malted Bread, a process which alters the Wheat during the production of Bread. The result is a sweet tasting, brown in apperance, doughy soft, moist bread. Its the best bread out there in my opinion, but can i find it in loaf form so i cannot make my own sandwich with it. There seems to be what can only be described a conspiracy not to provide Malted bread in large supermarkets. Not even their in-store bakeries produce this type.
From my research (visiting the bread section of supermarkets) the nearest i found was a small batch loaf of Weightwatcher's Danish Malted bread, this is far from ideal. The stores I visited included Morrisons, Tesco, Sainsbury's and Marks & Spencers. M & S stocked the small Malted Danish. Any self-respecting baker would know what im ranting on about, but of course is there a local baker that i can think of in my town?..... long gone my friend. Sure there is a good selection of tin loaf, bloomer, ideal for toasting, wholemeal (bored of that), seeded batch, farmhouse, french bread with french flour, Panini (dry dog biscuit) and all the rolls under the sun.
Is this type of bread so difficult to bake that no-one does it, is there a gap in the market for someone to fill, has all the bread gone into making the pre-packaged sandwichs, is malted bread explicitely reserved for pre-packaged sandwichs, what is going on? In Britain our bread is historically shaped into a square, to provide maximum surface area for a hard working person's sandwich. A malted variety of this cannot be hard to make, surely a household name like Hovis would be proud to produce such a quintessentially perfect english, sandwich Malted loaf?
