The ultimate comfort food? Miserable shoppers rediscover sliced white bread | Bread

Name: Sliced white bread.

Age: 94.

Appearance: On the up and up.

Ugh, sliced bread? We don’t eat that plastic muck around here. Let me guess, you bake your own bread?

That’s right! Nothing beats a home-baked sourdough. I’ve got bad news for you. Look down at your plate.

Argh! It’s medium-sliced white Kingsmill! What has happened to me? OK, calm down. First, it’s important to know that you are not alone in this. Sales of soft sliced white bread have soared in recent months, with Waitrose alone reporting a rise of 17% over the past year.

But why? Two answers, really. The first is that the rush of self-sufficiency that saw the country hastily turn to baking its own bread during the pandemic has long since boiled away to post-lockdown ennui. Remember how long it takes to bake a loaf of bread from scratch? Who has that sort of time any more? Better just to grab a bag of Hovis from Tesco Express.

What’s the other reason? Everything is crap now.

Pardon? Everything is crap. Nobody can afford anything, we’re all miserable, it’s going to be the worst winter in living memory and things are only going to get worse. It is, without exaggeration, an unimaginable hellscape out there.

Right. And what does that have to do with bread? Oh, right, yes. Cheap, processed bread is comforting.

Is it? Of course it is. Soft white sliced bread is the bread of childhood, isn’t it? The sandwiches you ate growing up were probably made with cheap white bread. Imagine if you came home from school and your mum gave you a hunk of artisanal wholewheat sourdough drizzled with olive oil. You’d have a tantrum, wouldn’t you?

I’m saying nothing. I know my audience. Anyway, listen. When the chips are down, humans have a habit of reaching for nostalgia. So that means lovely, bland, flat sandwiches and, if the John Lewis annual report is any indication, loads of deep-fried food.

Really? Absolutely. Sliced bread sales might have risen by 17%, but deep-fat fryer sales are up a whopping 36%.

But I’m middle class! So are these people, dummy. These are shoppers at Waitrose and John Lewis. Maybe they all suddenly got a taste for arancini or courgette flowers at the same time.

Well, if sliced white bread is trendy again, count me in. Great, welcome aboard! We’re doing fish paste next!

Do say: “Combat the cost of living crisis by buying sliced white bread.”

Don’t say: “Also combat the cost of living crisis by shopping at Aldi instead of Waitrose.”