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White bread often gets a bad rap for being boring. If you’re ranking all the best kinds of bread, varieties like sourdough, Hawaiian, and pumpernickel are bound to steal the flavor spotlight. But white bread’s appeal is in fact its neutrality. It’s a real workhorse: You need bread to make any of the tastiest sandwich recipes, and white bread allows the focus to fall on whatever ingredients you’re putting between its slices. However, you still want good white bread. Neutral doesn’t equate to invisible or unimportant. Texture and, yes, some flavor are still vital to the good bread experience, and the right balance of airy fluff, tender chew, crispy crust, and carby character isn’t always easy to nail. So, we ranked white bread brands from worst to best to help your next grocery store pick. What brand promises to be the most delicious blank canvas, and which should you avoid?
The answer to the latter question is Panera Bread Country White bread. It took the worst slot on our list. This was unexpected: The brand has “bread” in its name, and “Panera” is Latin for “bread basket.” The chain actually started as The St. Louis Bread Company bakery in 1987, and its menus are known today for items like bread-bowl soups and sourdough melts. So what went wrong with Panera’s packaged bread? The slices are thin and barely big enough to hold a sandwich’s fixings. The texture is dense, and the flavor is totally absent.
What people say about Panera Bread’s Country White bread
The winners in our white-bread ranking were Sara Lee Artesano Bakery Bread at number one and Nature’s Own Butterbread at number two. They both boast rich flavor, thick slices, and soft yet sturdy consistencies, making the shortcomings of Panera’s offering clear. Comparing Panera’s Country White with Sara Lee Artesano’s white bread, Panera has 80 calories, 1 gram of fat, 15 grams of carbohydrates, and 1 gram of sugar to Sara Lee’s 110 calories, 1½ grams of fat, 20 grams of carbohydrates, and 2 grams of sugar, but these slight differences could be explained by the latter’s larger size. Sara Lee Artesano costs $3.49 in New York grocery stores, compared to Panera’s $4.49.
On Amazon, one reviewer called Panera Bread Country White hard and dry, without “that fresh, bouncy bread” quality. A fellow shopper said, “I have to say this is the worst white bread [I] have tried, and probably the worst white bread in the market. This came as bit of a surprise to me given many of the office lunches of my past life were from its restaurants.” Other buyers called out its dryness, as well as it just crumbling apart and having no flavor. They compare it to the bread you’d actually get at Panera and say it’s nowhere near as good. Panera’s Country White bread is tougher to find than other brands at stores, so it may be easy to avoid.
