Do you eat bread with your meals at home?

I don’t buy bread or pasta anymore, mainly because a state of wheatlessness seems to suit my innards better and my abdomen loses its puffiness. I don’t miss it, and when I happen to have good bread (i.e. from a bakery or homemade), I really enjoy it.

Generally, my home carb is brown rice or oatmeal.

It very much depends on the meal. Garlic bread is sometimes involved with pasta, and homemade rolls accompany salads. Then there’s toast (rye) with omelets. and egg dishes. Otherwise, loaves of bread are restricted to sandwiches.

We only have bread with the meal if it is some sort of formal meal. My S/O eats toast with many foods, especially pasta. No one eats breakfast.

I need bread with soup and spaghetti because I am going to use the buttered bread to get the last little bit of soup and spaghetti sauce off the bottom of my bowl. I often eat my soup by dipping the bread in it, or tearing the bread into pieces and throwing it in my soup, one piece at a time.

For some reason BBQ often calls for garlic bread. I used to make fried bread a lot, but rarely do that any more.

I eat bread with soup, when soup is the whole meal. I hate soggy bread, so I am not dipping it into anything, it’s on the side.

My fiancé bakes bread nearly every weekend, so it is present at many meals – but not all.

Only with spaghetti.
But this question brought back the memory of my grandparents putting out bread for every meal. I had forgotten about that.

If I’m entertaining, there will usually be bread and cheese before the meal (a baguette and a few nice cheeses).

I almost never have bread with the meal unless the meal is soup. Once in a blue moon, I might make garlic bread with my pasta – maybe once every two years or so.

There is almost always a bread component to my breakfasts, unless I’m having oatmeal or pancakes.

We would only eat bread with our meal if it was a component of that meal, say the bun on a burger. However, it’s rare we eat burgers or similar foods. That’s likely to be a treat meal when the footy is on or something. I don’t usually eat bread with soup these days. Usually the soup is sufficient.

No, not usually. Only at my parents’ on special occasions.

Yum, @dappled_leaves. Heavily buttered toast is delicious with oatmeal!

It seems really odd to me now when I think about eating gravy on torn bread as a kid. We had it often. It wasn’t very good.

Very rarely. I’ll stick a few garlic breadsticks in the oven if we’re having chicken and dumplings because we like to dip the bread in it, but that’s about it. We almost never make soup, so there’s really no need for bread.

Toast with oatmeal? I never heard of such a thing. I guess it isn’t that odd since they are both breakfast foods. Although, I find it odd from the perpective that both are starchy. That’s the thing about pasta and bread for me—more starch? At a restaurant I eat the bread they give you while you wait for the meal as kind of a mindless nosh. I came there hungry, they put bread in front of me, sure I’ll eat a piece.

Sometimes I have bread as snack. Things like bread with jam, bread with nothing, bread with margarine, bread with melted cheese on it (I guess that is a an open face cheese sandwich) and even hot pretzels, which I think of as bread.

Not normally. If I do, it’ll be the last thing I eat because bread fills you up.
Usually I eat it if I’m having pasta or something that requires sauce to be scraped from the plate. Either that or it’s a dinner roll at a restaurant. Even then, I wait until after I’ve eaten my main course.

Many of you might want to answer this Q about cleaning your plate with bread. It led to me asking this question.

Not at all when I’m cooking for myself. Bread is a very valuable commodity in my apartment, with many sandwiches being made all the time and only having time for a once-if-that-weekly shopping trip, so we don’t use it willy nilly.

At home my mum usually serves warm bread with dinner and it’s a treat. But I tend to feel icky if I eat too many carbs so I forego it if the main dish is pasta etc.

Not with meals that already include a carb. But I LOVE baguettes with soup or salad. One of my favorite meals is a green salad with baguette, cheese, and salami.

^ Okay, my stomach just growled audibly.

Bread is one of my favorite foods, but I don’t have it with every meal. I think I eat more bread during the colder months during the year. There are times when I could only eat bread and be happy. My personal favorite is sourdough.

When there is some coarse, peasant broth or thin, dandified soup.

Every so often I will have garlic bread with a meal but other than that, no.

Yes, I break bread with most meals, excluding roast dinner on sundays, that would be daft.

This is so common in Italian and French rustic or peasant dining that the Italians have an expression for it; fare la scarpetta, which means to mop up the sauce from a plate of food with a piece of bread.

When I spent the summer with a French family a long time ago, when we set the table for lunch and dinner, forks went to the left, knives and spoons to the right, and routinely a good chunk of a baguette in front of the plate. It was expressly for mopping…sauces, dressings, gravy, the bottom of the soup bowl.

It was also commonplace when we ate at other people’s homes. Why waste those delicious last drops?

Sometimes. Often time all I’ll have for my whole meal is 2 or 3 pieces of garlic bread or something, and that is all.

In fact, that is a splendid idea and I’m going to get some now!

But:
@Dutchess_III: you are the anti-mopper.
@gailcalled is the ultimate-mopper.

I’m with @gailcalled. All the way, on this.

In some cultures eating every morsel can be rude or imply you want seconds. In a America it is not usually perceived that way, but I just mention it in case anyone is interested. If you travel or do business with people from other places, or even if you married into a family that only recently came to America, it might be useful to look into the cultural differences.

Usually not. There will be enough carbs on my plate anyway. But my parents always serve bread with a meal.

When I was into fixing dinner every evening, when my kids were little, we always had some sort of bread with our meals. So did I, growing up.

I think I had meat, vegetable and bread for years, too, @Dutchess_III as a traditional meal.

If the bread is good, @JLeslie, bring it on.

Fresh, hot, crusty bread and cheese is a meal I’ve savored!

@ibstubro Why would you eat bread that is not good?

I don’t consider most sandwich bread “good”, @dappled_leaves, but it can be a vehicle for conveying “good” fillings.

I won’t eat sandwich bread with soup, yet I hesitate to eat soup without a crusty baguette.

And the refrigerated biscuits-in-a-tube are just shit. When I was a kid, I ate them because they were there, and it was custom. I won’t touch one now.

Why would you eat anything that is not strictly good? Lots of reasons: convenience, custom, tradition…
It’s the foundation of American Fast Food. I know from my years in restaurant kitchens that presentation is 70–80% of the battle in America. Americans will eat pure plastic if it’s pretty enough (look at winter tomatoes), and will consistently reject delicious, yet ugly, food.

FYI the frozen Pillsbury biscuits in a bag that are labeled flaky layers are very good in my opinion. Hard to find those. Most supermarkets have the southern style or homestyle? I don’t remember what they are called. The refrigerated flaky layers are terrible.

No. I haven’t bought bread in months.

Yes. I have enjoyed frozen biscuits, @JLeslie. Even ones that mimicked Red Lobster with cheese and garlic.

But even though I grew up eating refrigerated turds-in-a-tube, they are not biscuits, and they are not good.

I had a friend that thought the best pizza came in a box with a powdered ‘mix with water’ crust. Now, the fact that you are occasionally required to eat garbage as a child does not mean you have to carry the tradition into adulthood.

Not very often, although I do love bread. I guess it just doesn’t occur to me and it would usually be too much food. The only time we add it, specifically, is with rolls or biscuits at Thanksgiving and Xmas, or sometimes we’ll make garlic bread to go with spaghetti or chili, and sometimes we’ll make cornbread to go with chili or a bowl of butter beans.

I love it when you go out to eat and they bring you a basket of some type of bread, but it is so fattening.

I eat a lot of burritos and pizza, so technically I’m eating bread, but not adding bread to a meal.

For my Xmas baking this year, I specifically made Beer Cheese Bread because one of my co-workers doesn’t prefer sweets. Everybody loved it.

I may have to have a peanut butter and Trader Joe’s Cherry Preserves.SY550.jpg on whole wheat bread for dinner tonight. If you’ve never tasted this jelly/jam before, it’s da bomb!

I’m hiding my latest tub of Trader Joe’s Blue Cheese and Toasted Pecan Dip, @Kardamom Hour and a half trip to replace it!

@ibstubro I saw that there. Maybe I should get some tomorrow after work. Do you recommend that I do?

Trader Joe’s is a ten minute ride from my house. I was there three days ago. Now I want to go back asap. They also have beautiful greeting cards, wrapped in plastic, sold individually for $1 each. Can’t beat that.

If you like Blue cheese and pecans, @Kardamom, get thee to a Trader Joes. I swear, it’s like the cheese and pecans are having sex. Melded into one, yet totally distinct. I shared some with my cousin last night and I thought I was going to have to tear it out of her hand and _run. The first tub I brought home and loved. Was parceling it out; savoring. Day 2 or so, I set it on the table with some pretzel chips, and tell the S/O, “You should really try this.” Next I notice? GONE.

If you like seafood, @jca, the Mahi-mahi burgers are wonderful. Pricey, but worth it. Too good for sandwich bread. Eat alone or go to some trouble to dress. I use the pan-fry directions, as stated on the box.

@ibstubro It just so happens that I need to go to Trader Joe’s tomorrow night.

We buy the pecan pralines at Trader Joes when we happen to be in one. We don’t have one very close to us.

I don’t have a Trader Joe’s close, either, and frankly, of Lucky’s Market and Whole Foods it’s my least favorite to shop, @JLeslie. Still, they all have products that are exclusive. And size matters. I have 2 Lucky’s markets about an hour and a half from me…opposite directions. The one to the west is nearly twice the size of the one to the east.

Even The Dollar Tree has “super stores”.

They just opened a Whole Foods 15 minutes from me. It will be more like 25 minutes when I move, buts in the closest mall so I can do a lot in one stop if I go.

Trader Joe’s is about 45 minutes away. I go when I am out of town and happen to be near one.

The grocery chain here is Publix, which is great, so I don’t feel desperate to go to the others anyway. The thing I like best about WF’s is the food bar if I want something semi healthy and don’t want to cook.

The few times I’ve been there, I’ve found that you have to be careful of the WF food bar. It can look 10 times better than it tastes.

The first time I was there, I bought the most delicious looking slice of pizza. I called it dross and threw most of it away. Tasteless. There are too many other good things to eat in the city!

I also bought vegetarian jerky that trip. Laughable that anyone would go to the trouble of packaging, mush less marketing, that crap!

@ibstubro That’s true!