After tasting some of the desserts I’ve tried fairly recently around where I live I truly believe that people don’t know WTFork a Good Baked Item should taste like.

No……. I’m not talking forking fancy smancy high end Las Vegas Desserts like the ones below.

I talking good baked goods and desserts that just about everyone loves like  pies, cookies, bagels, cream puffs, cakes and breads. Desserts that are free of non-dairy whipped cream and artificial flavorings. Desserts that aren’t made with fillings from a can or package. Honest to goodness real desserts that are made with butter, fresh eggs and cream. I’m also talking real breads. Crusty, flavorful breads. Real breads that you look forward to eat.

When I was growing up it seemed every neighborhood had at least one bakery. No matter what kind of bakery I went in to Italian, Jewish or German……… where I grew up…… during that time you could always count on something fresh baked and scrumptious. The bakeries had this great aroma that I still remember. The aroma of fresh baked goods was so good your belly would forking hurt if you didn’t eat something.

Real bakeries were also very noisy places.

You hear lots of machinery. Heavy duty mixers, the cash register, the conversations of customers.  You’d always hear the mechanic loud thundering roar of maybe several different bread slicing machines going-

slicing fresh loves of crusty breads for customers that were waiting in the long line. In those days even the forking malls all had bakeries. They weren’t the same as the free standing bakeries but looking back a whole heck of a lot better than some of what I see today sometimes. In those old days you’d make the weekly trip to the bakery to purchase bread and a few treats. Once in a while you might order a cake for a special occasion. Children were always given a few complimentary cookies and if a child was lucky their parent let them pick out a special yummy treat. In those days people cared about quality. You could partake in enjoying natural ingredients like real butter, eggs and real cream in your fresh baked goods no matter what bakery you walked into. The whole bakery smelled like sugar and spice. If you worked in a bakery you left smelling like a donut. (I know because I did)

Time has marched on and things are different now. Life styles have changed. People are busier than ever and are always on the go working more hours. Doing more things.

Many people are also more health conscience too, they are working out and are not eating desserts or breads like they used too.

So weekly trips to the bakery are made by less people these days. They are not a priority these days. Fewer more limited new bakeries do pop up every once in a while and also many of the old bakeries have shuttered since the neighborhood  bakery for most people is a relic of the past.

People these days often settle for convenience and pick up something processed and cheaper from their local supermarket.

Something created with man made chemicals that sort of looks like dessert. Something that can sit on a shelf for a long time. Something that anybody can whip up possibly even made by the guy pictured below

by only adding a few ingredients, mixing it (with something clean one hopes) and baking it in a timed oven….DING!. Just add some pudding from a can or a mix and some non-dairy cream and Woop there it is. Many people actually think this sort of dessert taste good and this is what dessert actually is because that is what they are used too.

It just forking KILLS ME that a few local bakeries in my area put out baked goods that are on par with the level of supermarket bakeries.

Recently I thought I’d try a baked treat from a bakery I was passing by on the way home from some place. The bakery offered me a rugula while I was deciding on what I’d try. I thought the rugula was pretty good and thought whatever I tried would be ok because after all it was from a bakery. I love lemon bars because of the lemony filling, the tasty crumbs and they usually have a buttery tender crust. I love the play between tangy, sweet and savory, so I picked a lemon bar thinking it would be just right. I dug into the lemony curd first. It had this unnatural flavor like low quality lemonade. It also lacked the creamy, silky mouthfeel of natural lemon curd that’s rich and carefully made. Instead this lemon filling was sort of Jell-o like. I don’t think a human created it. Perhaps something demonic?  I think the yellow goo was made in a laboratory and stored in a can till it got sold to this bakery.

The top crumbs were edible but not delicious and buttery. The bottom crust was as thick as a life raft

and hard like cement.

God this lemon bar was terrible I thought I was going to cough up a forking brick from the few bites I ate. It was so bad I can never step in this bakery again.

Another bakery not too far from out of my way is an Italian Bakery.

I thought they’d make an OK Italian Rum Cake that I wanted to give someone for a gift. I thought the cake looked ok and this bakery just like the last one I spoke about gets very high reviews on a certain review website. This cake purchase goes a half year back so I don’t remember every detail about the cake but I do remember the filling most because it was very unnatural tasting so much so it was memorable. I remember the filling was what made eating the cake next to impossible. The filling tasted like they dumped in a whole bottle of forking rum extract into the filling. Rum extract not forking real rum……..rum extract.  I don’t recall the rest of the cake being very tasty but I can tell you the filling made it a lost cause.  I felt terrible when I tasted this cake, sorry and embarrassed that I gave it to someone.

I also purchased what they called Italian bread from this bakery and I kid you not. The bread tasted like squishy unnatural white bread from the forking supermarket. I can never go back to that bakery either. Eating baked goods from those bakeries was just like purchasing a baked good from the supermarket or from the dollar store. They were just very unappetizing. It forking saddens me and confuses me. I have no understanding on why you’d open a bakery if you aren’t baking scrumptious decadent treats?

 

It appears that these bakeries have enough business. Both have been in business for years and both have great reviews on a certain review website. Maybe it’s all because people don’t know what the fork Good Baked goods should taste like.