The Attack of the MBA (phase 1)

I own a bread knife made by Dexter. It is a fine knife, twelve inches long with a thin scalloped edge. It cuts straight, not drifting away, making wedge shaped slices by the uneven pressure of a poorly designed cutting edge.

I am good with it. With it I can make almost transparently thin slices and slim sandwiches lower in calories. I can cut bagels, and any type of bread, but I draw the line at frozen goods and aluminum cans. Leave that trick to the TV advertisers.

Imagine my shock and horror when I arrived at the market to buy a loaf of bread to feed through my knife in a Green way. I was looking for a loaf of Flax or other sourdough type of bread, from officially Organic, Bio, Whole Earth, Fair Trade, Peasant Grown, or otherwise ecologically sound provenance. No mass produced pap for my expanding girth, thank you very much.

All the bread was sliced. Every bit. Except for a few baguettes, rolls, or ethnic small stuff. No actual loaves suited to sandwich making. Like in sheets with thread count, I began a slice count to determine the price per sandwich from the various loaves.

Hmmm. It seems that the number of slices seems to be a constant. The bigger loaves offer thicker slices. So the idea of economy of scale goes out the window. It appears that the MBA’s have figured out the essence of the bread slice. They are used in pairs, but sold in groups called loaves. Increase sales per pound of bread mix? Simple, lower the number of slices per loaf. Probably a global conspiracy.

I want the raw loaf back. I want to determine my own calorie count per pair of slices, and the amount of toasting time for a slice.

Besides, my bread knife is the professional model and I got it on sale, because nobody uses them anymore and the kitchen supply company went out of business, overstocked with them.