Tough to be the breadwinner when you’re picking out a loaf

From breadwinners to bread lines, bread seems to run the gamut in our lives.

We bake bread. We need/knead bread. We break bread.

It’s there when we celebrate, and it’s there when we’re down and out.

So here we are in the bread aisle at Kroger, one of the busiest aisles in the store what with everyone in need of a loaf of bread or two every time they hit the grocery store, right?

Of course it’s also the first aisle in the store layout and chocked full of displays down the middle of the aisle with bread sales, snack cakes and markdowns. So all you need is a cart along either side of those displays, and suddenly it’s like I-465 at 5 o’clock. Nobody’s moving. Bread-aisle gridlock.

Throw in my checkered experience with the store’s electric carts and you have the recipe for some real mayhem even without that smarmy TV commercial pitchman of the Mayhem alter ego.

It was a contested, elongated visit to the bread aisle recently that caused me to ponder: When exactly did it become so difficult to pick out a loaf of bread?

It used to be you had your choice of white bread, wheat bread or rye.

Now you’ve got more, much more than the red, yellow and blue balloons printed on the wrapper.

Just look at the shelves. There’s Kroger brand, Private Selection, Bunny Bread, Sara Lee (nobody doesn’t like her), Nature’s Own, Pepperidge Farm, Brownberry, Hawaiian Bread, the pricey Dave’s Killer Bread, Hillbilly Bread (meant to be paired with Mountain Dew?) and dozens more.

As I stand there mesmerized, the football coach’s wife bursts past me, cuts to the right, grabs a loaf of something I failed to identify and sprints off to do the rest of her shopping.

I’m left in her dust trying to decide between white, wheat, whole wheat, cracked wheat, pita bread and gluten-free varieties. There are even half-loaves designed for live-alone folks like me who can’t polish off a one-pound or larger loaf in the prescribed time.

Don’t butter me up, the half-loaf costs essentially the same price as any store brand loaf. So where’s the motivation? Am I just making myself feel better not throwing away moldy bread at some point?

Even the buns can’t escape this bread-aisle explosion. We have hamburger buns, hotdog buns, slider buns, “everything” buns topped with all kinds of seeds and onions, and of course, Ronald McDonald’s favorite, the sesame seed bun.

Is it any wonder my brain can’t comprehend what I want, what I need or what might be the best bread bargain?

Back when I was a teenager I worked at a suburban Chicago delicatessen in an era in which there was even a rock group known as Bread (think “Baby, I’m A-Want You”) while Butternut and Wonder Bread dominated the market.

Wisconsin Farm Deli was one of the few places outside Chicago city limits where you could buy a fresh loaf of Rosen’s Rye, dropped off in brown paper bags on the sidewalk in front of the store before it opened for the morning. Obviously this was before rodents roamed the earth.

Back then I bemoaned the varieties available to customers who inexplicably who just ask for “a loaf of rye bread.” That’s about like ordering a salad these days. We immediately entered into a game of 20 Questions that I mostly had little desire to play standing alongside a window display of rye bread, doughnuts and coffee cakes.

Large or small? Dark or light? With seeds or without? Sliced or unsliced? Normally at least three of those questions had to be repeated for the bread buyer.

To this day those questions automatically come back to me like I was still that pimply-faced kid reaching into the bread window to make a selection for someone who wouldn’t know what they had until they bit into a slice when they got home later.

So as I sat in the Kroger bread aisle in my motorized cart, I smiled remembering all that and plucked a simple loaf of Sara Lee wheat bread off the shelf, primarily because it was on sale for a buck and a half.

But more importantly I didn’t have to slice it, weigh it or slide it into a wax bag in front of an audience of deli groupies.

All I had to do was get it safely out of the bread-aisle congestion.

If it weren’t for the cart I was riding, I could have copied the wife of the local football coach’s style, tucked that loaf into my elbow and scrambled to the next aisle, which incidentally happens to be the wine and beer section.

Ah, so now I understand that bread aisle placement. My wheat bread should go nicely with a bold Merlot.