White Bread

AS A FORMER bread squasher, I was happy to learn that the practice of flattening white bread was not only back in practice, it is now considered trendy.Back in the days when I dined in the elementary school cafeteria, I would regularly deflate the airy white bread on my bologna sandwiches, and, in an occasional attack of orneriness, reach out and squash the sandwich of a classmate who was irritating me.So the other day, as I watched Ellen Brown flatten a piece of white bread, it brought back memories.

Stuffing is the co-star of the Thanksgiving feast.Many people prefer a traditional bread stuffing flavored with celery, onions, herbs, broth and giblets, but there are as many variations as there are picky eaters.For our guide to the stuffing basics, we consulted chef Allen Plungis of Katherine's Catering and Special Events in Ann Arbor, Mich., and a cookbook standard, "50 Best Stuffings and Dressings" by Rick Rodgers (Broadway, $10).Here's your road map to great stuffing:Q. What kind of bread should I use?

Maybe I'm mad, but the mere mention of meatballs makes my mind meander with memories of magical moments. A mutation of meat loaf, a midget of meats, these miniature mounds might not be majestic, but my main mission here in my monologue is to muster a memorial to the master of munchies.Make no mistake, meatballs are main magnets at merry affairs, with most of the masses munching multiples of these marvelous marbles while mingling. Meatball maniacs like myself might manage to muster a meatball museum or maybe a mammoth monument with a meatball motif, mentioning the motto, "Meatballs on every menu."

Every once in awhile a restaurant opens up with such promise it makes a food critic's heart sing.The new Rothwells is one of those.Promise isn't perfection, so there are things to carp about -- a dinner served at room temperature here, a waiter undereducated in the food there. But when Rothwells is good, it's very, very good.The loyal customers who followed Mark Hofmann when he left Due to open Rothwells must have been surprised at his new place. Due, sister restaurant to Linwood's, is known for its rustic chic and its casual but upscale northern Italian menu.

While shopping the other day I ran into Steve, the bread man as he was stocking the shelves. Curious, I asked if he had noticed any trends in the type of bread folks are buying.He said he can hardly keep Pepperidge Farm's Seven Grain on the shelves. He said, that Seven Grain had gotten him off white bread. Now it's the only bread he eats.Pepperidge Farm's Seven Grain is a good first step for most Americans raised on white bread. Although enriched flour is its ,, first ingredient, it does contain enough wheat bran, rice bran and oat bran to bring its dietary fiber total to 1 gram per slice.

Crab cake recipes, including some award winners, poured in for Madeline Reed of Baltimore who asked for a recipe similar to the "one from a tavern of 40 years ago. It was called Bartinfelder on Philadelphia Road. Also, I'd like any crab cake recipes from Marylanders," she wrote.Lisa Ayres, Baltimore, asked for a crab cake recipe similar to the one from the Blue Bell Restaurant in Fallston. "They have been closed for some time, but when I was a child they had the best crabs around," she wrote.

Knock, knock.Who's there?Bread.Bread who?Bready or not, here come hundreds of new loaves catering to the weight-conscious, fat-conscious, health-conscious consumer."

I have to print a retraction.Several weeks ago, I said white bread contained no fiber. Judi Adams of the Wheat Foods Council pointed out to me that white bread does, in fact, contain 0.5 grams of soluble fiber per slice. (Soluble fiber is the kind you find in oat bran, which helps somewhat in lowering cholesterol.)While I do apologize for my technical error, I must admit to being somewhat puzzled by the critical nature of the letter I received.Why would the WFC care whether you choose white or whole wheat products when they're all made from wheat flour?

The message often comes quiet as a whisper, but it's hard to miss.One white man got it sitting in a parents group at his son's school: "Everyone wants to know what the African-American and the Haitian and the Native American think, but no one really cares what the white man thinks. I am a known quantity. I aminvisible."Another white man got it from white women."They think white men are very uncool; they've heard it all before," a Boston lawyer said. "Sometimes I think I should make it up, like I tell them I was emotionally abused.

White BreadEditor: After reading your July 10 article reporting on the further regulation of street vendors, I am sick at heart. Sidewalk hucksters will now have to comply with a uniform code or fold their tents. And absolutely no more selling from tables, thank you!The Baltimore City Council and the other powers that be feel the image of our city's commerce can no longer afford the "rag tag" carts and tables. The new regulating statutes were enacted in the interests of "aesthetics." The "ultimate goal," says one vendor-licensing potentate, "is to have something visually pleasing, nice and clean . . ."

The TastyKake truck comes three times a week to the corner store on North Mount Street, rumbling past drug dealers and piles of trash to fill the racks with cupcakes and cream-filled chocolate bars. The Utz man comes twice to deliver little bags of chips, each one containing about 20 percent of the recommended daily intake of fat. But if the owner of Blooming Sun Market, Grace Lyo, wants to sell fruits or vegetables, "I have to go to Sam's Club and get them myself." As public health researchers grapple with the alarmingly high rates of diabetes, obesity and heart disease in poor urban neighborhoods, they are turning their attention to corner stores.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- The food they sell may be flat, yet Herman Jacobs and his son Brian say that sales are anything but. The two own Tumaro's Gourmet Tortillas, which sells flavored varieties of the ancient staple to retailers and restaurants in the United States and around the world. In 11 years of business, the Jacobses watched as diners went through the low-carb craze, the wrap craze and the grains craze, each driving tortilla sales higher and higher. "People are using tortillas for more and more applications," said Brian Jacobs, 41. "We're really gaining momentum."

I have finally figured out what's wrong with this country. It's the frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We have now reached the point in our national cultural evolution where a significant number of adults do not have time or interest in making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for their children, so they buy them - $2.89 for four little, round PBJs with crimped edges - out of the ever-expanding frozen food section at the supermarket. The other day, at the Charles Street Safeway in Baltimore, a little old lady stood back near the dairy section, handing out samples of a product I have seen but refused to acknowledge - Smucker's Uncrustables.

HOLIDAY MEALS WITH ALL THE TRIMMINGS aren't all that difficult to pull off. It's all the other meals that are the problem for me. Time is at a premium during Christmas and New Year's, and part of the reason is that everyone wants to eat, and that requires cooking. There are cookie exchanges and office parties and neighborhood gatherings, all of which require you to prepare food. (Every time I say, "Can I bring anything?" I wish I had kept my mouth shut.) And then the kids come home from college, acting like they haven't eaten since fall break.

SINCE THERE are only about six of us left in the entire country who still eat bread, I probably shouldn't have been surprised about what happened when my wife and I went to a local restaurant the other night. After we were seated, our server appeared with a basket of dinner rolls. "I don't know whether you still eat this stuff," she said, putting the basket on the table. Then she looked down at it the way you'd look at medical waste. Apparently, she figured us for two of the millions of diet zombies who have joined the low-carb cult.

White bread, a mainstay of the American diet since at least the 1930s, is under attack. The Department of Agriculture is considering recommending that consumers drastically cut their consumption of fortified grains. They are used to enrich a wide variety of food products - particularly white bread, which is made from refined white flour. The refined grains sector already has been battered by the popularity of low-carbohydrate diets. White bread came under additional fire from a recent study released by Tufts University in Boston that links the consumption of such bread to wider waistlines.

Watch out, Wonder Bread. Sales of the unassuming but versatile tortilla are catching up to white bread, reflecting the growth of the nation's Hispanic population and the broadening of the American palate. "Tortillas have had steady growth 10 to 15 percent a year seemingly forever," said Irwin Steinberg, founding president of the 14-year-old Dallas-based Tortilla Industry Association. The popularity of wraps -- renamed flour tortillas that are sometimes flavored -- also helped boost the round, flat bread's share to 32 percent of the combined retail and food service market for bread, just behind white loaves at 34 percent, says a report from market researcher Mintel for the association.

WHAT WE'RE going to do -- Marc Attman's idea, not mine -- is have a "How to eat Jewish deli" class on Corned Beef Row on Friday, which is great in every aspect, except if you're Catholic and just gave up meat for Lent. I don't know if one needs archdiocesan dispensation for the purposes of this one-hour educational experience, but I think you could make a case -- instruction in the proper preparation and consumption of a corned beef sandwich being God's work. This all started a few weeks ago when, in relating an otherwise amusing story about a northern Baltimore County woman's effort to get through the snow-clogged roads to Attman's landmark delicatessen on Lombard Street, a reader of this column reported that the intrepid customer ordered corned beef on white bread.

MOM, making that brown bag lunch just got easier. The Sara Lee Corp. has found a way to bake crustless bread. That's right, a slice of bread without the crust that doesn't lose its shape and packs a more nutritious punch than a slice of white bread. For decades, kids have eaten around the crust, torn it off or convinced the lunch-makers at home to do away with those brown edges on their peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And moms usually complied. All it took was a few quick strokes of a knife.

What's in a name? When it comes to "lake trout" - that fried fish fare so unique to Baltimore it's almost a trademark - lies. Two for starters. Touted for decades on restaurant signs across the city, "lake trout" is filleted, breaded and deep-fried here at a clip of tons a week, then served up - usually in tin foil with two pieces of white bread - to customers who often assume that, based on its name, they are eating trout from a lake. But "lake trout" is neither. And if you are one of the few who already knows that, who has been told - perhaps by a frank fishmonger - that "lake trout" is actually "whiting," caught in the bay or ocean, well, that's not exactly right, either.