Bread

A wave of carbohydrate crime is sweeping Bucks County! A Bucks County woman has been convicted of plotting to murder her husband by poisoning his mashed potatoes. She baked up a story about having indeed talked about doing the deed, but never following through. The jury treated that alibi with starchy disdain. Meanwhile, testimony began this week in the trial of a county man accused of ruining more than $8,000 worth of baked goods, allegedly because of a fetish for going to the supermarket and squeezing breads, bagels and cookies until they crumbled.

Q. Since we are a working couple and use only two to four slices of bread a day, what is the best way to preserve the bakery freshness of the bread - refrigeration, freezing or keeping it at room temperature? John Przasnyski Philadelphia A. What I do is freeze sliced bread in a plastic wrapper, remove slices as I need them and toast them. Carol Rinzler in "The Complete Food Book" suggests the following: "Store bread at room temperature in a tightly closed plastic bag or in a bread box. How long bread stays fresh depends to a great extent on how much fat it contains.

Leonard Amoroso Sr., 84, formerly of Wynnewood and retired co-owner of Amoroso Baking Co., died at Bryn Mawr Terrace Saturday of complications from a fall. In the 1950s, Mr. Amoroso persuaded the manager of the A&P supermarket in Overbrook Park to stock Italian bread from his family's West Philadelphia bakery. The Amorosos had been selling their bread in corner stores in Italian neighborhoods and delivering fresh baked loaves directly to housewives in time for dinner. The supermarket manager reluctantly agreed to carry the product when Mr. Amoroso promised to buy back unsold loaves, his son Leonard Jr. said.

Bread and butter are basic, yet they are also one of the simplest ways to make a meal memorable. Usually an afterthought, bread, in even the most elegant meal, seems never to receive the same concern and care given to other courses. But when attention is paid and forethought given, bread can be a precious jewel in a meal otherwise crowded with treasures. One of the easiest ways to make a special bread requires no baking, kneading or even turning on the oven. It calls only for a wholesome loaf, a bit of sweet butter, a bundle of herbs or a slice of cheese, and a little bit of your time and imagination.

Dear Polly: I cut up slices of stale bread and keep the cubes in a plastic bag to feed the ducks in our neighborhood park once a week or so. However, the bread in the bag sometimes starts getting moldy before I can use it. Is this harmful to the ducks? - H.W. Dear H.W.: I don't advocate feeding moldy food to anyone, even ducks. You can prevent or retard the mold development in two ways: (1) Keep the bread cubes in the freezer (they'll thaw quickly when you're ready to visit the park)

Dear Polly: Several years ago, we discovered that if you buy day-old bread (especially whole wheat), freeze it and then thaw it, it tastes like fresh- baked. Doing the same to fresh-baked white bread makes it taste almost like cake! - J.M.K. Dear Polly: When cooking cauliflower, add a little milk (about 1 teaspoonful). It helps to keep the cauliflower white. My toilet gets brownish stains because I have hard water. I flush the toilet, then before the water comes back, I use a steel wool soap pad to scrub the stain away.

The big guys are finally catching on that consumers want better-tasting, lower-calorie, higher-fiber alternatives to sandwich bread. Pepperidge Farm offers these 100-calorie flat rolls: good toasted with hummus or grilled for paninis. Available in whole wheat, oatmeal, and seven grain. If you need a beer primer to keep up with the crew at the latest gastropub (and who doesn't in brew-crazy Philly?), turn to a new book from local writer Lynn Hoffman for a tasty draft of advice. The Short Course in Beer (Künati)

Would you buy bread called bimbo ? Apparently its makers, Bimbo Bakeries, out of Mexico, are a bit concerned that some of you might not. Hence a few strategically placed billboards that have appeared on I-95 and elsewhere in Philadelphia recently offering a helpful pronunciation tip: "Say 'Beembo!' " As the global economy flattens boundaries between cultures and countries, Bimbo Bakeries' parent company, Grupo Bimbo, has discovered it has a bit of a hurdle to overcome as it seeks to become a national bread brand in the United States.

Here and there in this universe are people - maybe three - who are capable, and crazy, enough to bake several varieties of bread at once at home. The rest of us help the economy along by buying it from people with big ovens and lots of employees. There are plenty of local bakeries toiling over a dizzying array of breads that will make your unconventional New Year's Eve soup party the talk of 2005. There are, however, guidelines about which breads complement soup. "Usually you want bread that is hearty.

Muscovites felt the sting of the coming market economy yesterday, and in a sensitive spot: the price of bread. As a prelude to a partial freeing of prices in the capital on Dec. 1, Moscow officials yesterday increased prices on three high-quality breads by six to eight times. The Soviet bread store has for decades been a shrine of extremely low, state-controlled prices, and Moscow residents who caught a glimpse yesterday of the new prices were left in a state of slack-jawed shock.

Here is an excerpt from Craig LaBan's online chat: Craig LaBan: I hope you avoided drinking green beer during the St. Paddy's Day debauchery. If you were partying at a bar with a porta-potty parked outside, that wasn't a good sign. I celebrated with a snifter of Redbreast and my annual brown-bread bake-day - thanks to this Ballymaloe recipe I got from Simon Pearce many years ago. (Find recipe here.) Reader: Enjoyed your article about Anne Willan and her husband who have a large cookbook collection.

Flowers Foods, the Georgia-based bread- and snack-maker that bought Philadelphia's Tasty Baking Co. last year, is weighing whether to build a new bread bakery in the Philadelphia area. The company "is a week or three away from an announcement of a new bread bakery with access to the eastern Pennsylvania market," writes Mitchell Pinheiro, food-industry analyst at Janney Capital Markets, in a report to clients Monday, after visiting with Flowers officials at the company's South Philadelphia snack factory.

Chillin' Wit' is a regular feature of the Daily News spotlighting a name in the news away from the job. WRITER LORENE CARY, also a Penn lecturer, founder of Arts Sanctuary in North Philadelphia and member of the School Reform Commission, is the type of person who wakes up ready to do. What, exactly? Well, it depends on the day. On this particular Sunday morning, Cary looks ready, her mouth always a centimeter away from a warm smile, her arms about a five-minute countdown to a hug. The 55-year-old West Philly native wants to be clear, "There is no chilling in my life.

Peter McAndrews, arguably Philadelphia's Sandwich King, is doing something sacrilegious by sandwich standards: At Paesano's, his fantastic Philadelphia shops, he is serving select sandwiches on gluten-free bread. Seriously. The same bread that is more often compared to hockey pucks than haute cuisine. But McAndrews isn't making concessions. He's using the fresh-baked products from Toté Bakery, a gluten-free bread bakery - a rarity in the region - which opened in the Italian Market a few months ago. "Gluten-free stuff is always horrible," says McAndrews, whose customers often request the alternative bread because they suffer from celiac disease (like his sons)

THINK YOUR boss is bad? Well he, or she, has nothing on Matt Shaner, owner of the AFL's Pittsburgh Power. On Saturday, Shaner got the team together for a pregame meal at an Olive Garden near Orlando. And then he fired everybody. Now let's be clear: Shaner had reason to drop the ax. The players were being asked by their union to strike before that night's season-opener against the Orlando Predators. The players association wanted the owners to give the players - most of whom are paid $400 a game - a $300 per game raise.

An excerpt from the blog "My Daughter's Kitchen. " Eggplant parmesan has always been one of my favorite foods on this Earth. There are not too many versions I don't love, paper-thin slices stacked high, rounds breaded and fried and baked in a casserole, even thick chunks of eggplant roasted and drizzled with sauce and cheese. My daughter inherited my love of eggplant, but really preferred the traditional version, breaded and layered with cheese and sauce. But since she has celiac disease, we had to come up with a gluten-free version.

Shortly before noon every weekday, people in long cotton jackets enter the cinderblock break room at the Dietz & Watson meat plant in Northeast Philadelphia, spread out sheets of white paper, and lay out a picnic-worthy spread of cold cuts, including roast beefs, hams, salami, maybe London broil, and Muenster and American cheeses. Minutes later, about 150 dayside plant workers on their lunch breaks, many still in safety helmets, hairnets, and heavy overcoats, pick up tongs and divvy it up. For those who need bread, there's a vending machine filled with hot dog rolls packaged in plastic bags, two for 50 cents.

LOS ANGELES - The news of Kim Kardashian's divorce from basketball player Kris Humphries didn't surprise many fans of Keeping Up With the Kardashians . The E! reality series had captured scenes of the couple bitterly squabbling in the weeks leading to their blockbuster two-part TV wedding spectacular, which attracted an average of four million viewers on both nights. It was the timing of the split - a measly 72 days after the nuptials - that caused a ruckus. Fans felt duped, and the cynics felt vindicated.

Maybe digestible dreams do come true, because it's now possible, as a gluten-free eater, to get decent French bread in the Philadelphia area. "Good bread was always the first thing our customers have asked for," says Regina Petruzziello Mason, owner and recipe developer at Lansdale's Virago, which sells gluten-free baguettes, Danish, hoagie rolls, even Irish soda bread in its bakery and cafe. Celiacs and the gluten-intolerant used to be the beggars at the table, accepting whatever (wheatless)

"BACK TO SCHOOL" is a great time to note that college-age youths are driving a vegetarian surge - the first all-vegan dining hall just opened in Texas. It's also a good time for those of us past our college years to go "back to school" and educate our palates, especially trying out area veggie selections. As the frosh arrive in University City, many of them will start exploring new and exciting foods, but all of us, whatever age, can "audit" these collegiate culinary lessons. White Dog's (3420 Sansom)