Blogging A to Z: "B" is for Bread and Butter

Oh, my, we are getting alliterative, aren't we?

When I was growing up, bread to me was Butter Krust--white, square-shaped, generic, pretty much tasteless, and in those days in our part of the state, ubiquitous. There was a wonderful billboard near the Butter Krust bakery in San Antonio, which featured a loaf of bread with slices continuously falling out of the wrapper like a wheel, via a spinning mechanism behind the board. The bakery building itself, abandoned for decades now, still stands in all its beige brick blandness on Broadway (more alliteration, sorry), waiting to be renovated and used for something hopefully fabulous.

As a child I regarded bread only as a housing for baloney (this word, the dictionary tells me, is an accepted variant of "bologna"). I was not a peanut-butter-and-jelly kid, nor a tuna salad kid; I was strictly baloney. Plain, no mayo, no tomato or lettuce, no nothing, and of course the crusts had to be trimmed off. This was the sandwich my mother packed in my shiny red vinyl "go-go dancers" lunch box, the sandwich I usually took two or three bites of, then discarded in order to get to the really important lunch box items: the potato chips and Hostess Ding Dongs. At family meals, bread was never really a feature; being Filipino, white rice was our primary starch. On the occasional family outing to Luby's or Wyatt's, I always slid my tray right past the breads section with nary a glance.

Only in the past twenty years or so has bread captured my taste buds. When I lived in Houston, I frequently--who am I kidding--I usually ate out. Most of the restaurants I patronized served wonderful breads with their meals, so I came to know there was indeed bread beyond Butter Krust, flavorful, textural, complex. And with that newly acquired knowledge came a deep and abiding appreciation for bread's worthiest enhancer: butter.

So great is my fondness for butter, I will venture so far as to say that bread, no matter how flavorful, textural, and complex on its own, is ultimately a mere vehicle on which to slather the creamy wonderfulness that is butter. Were it not for my borderline cholesterol, I would slather daily and with abandon. Fortunately, there is always that healthier and equally wonderful alternative, olive oil--but even olive oil cannot, and shall never, banish butter from its rightful place on my palate. And since my sister introduced to me that ingenious device called a butter keeper, in which the butter remains velvety soft, smooth, and room temperature, I no longer suffer the annoyance of trying to spread refigerator-cold pats on my bread.

As I write, there is a keeper-full of delectable Irish butter waiting to be slathered on a piece or two of toasted oatnut bread. This evening I will put the kettle on for my decaf Earl Grey tea, butter my toast, and settle down contentedly to watch Dancing with the Stars. Ahhhhhh.