You've just reminded me of a German colleague who moved to the US that was asked in his first week "How are you enjoying things? What have you found surprising?" and replied with "Shopping has been difficult because I don't recognise most of the brands or products. The supermarket has like 100 different types of bread, except as best I can tell it's actually just the 1 type of bread in 100 different shapes. Also it's not bread, it's more like a cake."
I mean it's the same in the UK - there are probably 30+ different types of bread in any supermarket, but it's all the same. It has the same shape, same taste, just different bakery that makes it.
I'd say the UK is somewhere in between, with different types of white bread actually being different (e.g., baps vs rolls). My early encounters in the US were similar to my German colleague where much of the variation in bread was simply to shape (e.g., rolls vs sliced loaf) but it was ultimately the same flavour and texture. Obviously in both countries you can go looking and find a much broader array of options. It's just a stark contrast to experiences in many continental European countries where almost any store that sells bread seems to have white, sourdough, regular rye, dark rye, etc. and each variety is so vastly different in taste and texture.
Good bread is something you buy from a bakery. It's made from flour, water, salt and yeast. The stuff you get in supermarkets is full of additives to "keep it fresh" and a lot of it has added sugar.
I don't think this is generally true. It's very common for US grocery stores to have freshly baked bread, and there's always a huge variety of prepackaged sliced bread, it's not just like sugary wonder bread or something.
Certainly there are some places where your only option is a dollar store that probably won't have anything good, but I've been a lot of places in the US and I've never found this to be an issue.
The one time I visited the US the bread was alright! But I also had a PBJ made from a loaf of Texas Toast bread, and it was _by far_ the worst bread I've ever had.
Two slices of high fiber, low carb, multigrain bread. Toast if you can hold off your food-in-mouth-now need for a couple minutes.
Spread hummus on both slices. Hummus is a great butter/cheese/mayo replacement.
Sprinkle a mix of seeds (sun flower kernels, hemp, chia, flax, sesame) on one side.
Add red beet and cabbage sauerkraut, then turkey slices, to the other side.
Slap together and eat!
My personal recipe invention strategy is to constrain my experiments to high-flavor moderate calorie superfood combination bombs with construction times in the 30-60 second range. Prep: 1. Big jar of three months worth of high nutrition seeds. 2. There is no 2. This one is a staple now, but others' tastes may differ.
1. Toast one side only of two slices of fresh white bread.
2. Construct a sandwich with the untoasted sides facing out.
3. Inside the sandwich place mushed banana and a sprinkle of sugar.
As you bite through you get soft, crunch, soft, crunch, soft. It’s a thing of beauty.
Another weird combo is crispy bacon and marmalade. In regular toasted bread.
Ah, sandwiches. One of the great foods. Source: I’m from the North East.