Good news for those of you who have been missing Home Pride Bread.

The Stalking Horse Bidder for the Hostess bread brands has been named. The news is awash this morning with articles about how Flowers Foods will be buying some of the Hostess brands.

Here is the first paragraph from the news release from Flowers Foods that is posted on their website:

Of course the process is not over. The bankruptcy court has to approve the bid and then there will be an auction in a couple weeks at which Flowers Foods will be the preferred bidder. If they win the auction they will have to undergo another approval from the bankruptcy court and also regulatory approvals. However, this is good news as the process for Home Pride to return to the shelves is underway. For those of you waiting for Twinkies, you will have to wait a little longer for good news.

Flowers Foods does not have nationwide distribution at this time, however I am sure that the bakeries and depots that they are buying will accomplish this. At this time I do not live in their distribution zone. If I did, one of the breads that I would have tried would have been Nature’s Own. This is the bread that my parents, who live in Missouri, have been using for quite some time. Flowers Foods also produces Sunbeam bread, which brings back some memories.

Now, on to the temporary replacement bread quest. This week I have been trying out Sara Lee Honey Wheat.

This one will not be the temporary replacement. The texture is a little dense and it is not as good of a toast bread as some of the previous candidates. I also do not like the color of the bread. It is too white. I feel like I am eating white bread and not wheat bread. Maybe that is part of the marketing behind this variation though :-).

The current front-runners are Sara Lee 100% Whole Wheat and Oven Joy from Safeway.

The breads that have not passed the test are Safeway’s Butter Top Wheat, Oroweat Soft Family 100% Whole Wheat and Sara Lee Honey Wheat.

You  can click on the bread names above to visit the posts where I reviewed them.

So, am I done with my quest? Do I pick one of the front-runners now? I decided to try another one that I have been keeping my eye on. This week the candidate will be from Bimbo.

I want to give Bimbo Soft Wheat Family bread a try. Bimbo was one of the companies that was frequently mentioned as a potential buyer of the Hostess bread brands. I decided that I needed to give a Bimbo bread a chance to be the temporary replacement, even if they were not chosen by Hostess.

I really like the packaging for the bread. The little Bimbo Bear mascot carrying a loaf of bread is really cute.

I had been mis-pronouncing the name of the company. I will have to remember Bimbo is pronounced like Beembo. I will also have to see if the statements on the bottom of the loaf of bread hold true as I run the bread through the toast and sandwich tests this week.

I will be watching the news with interest over the next couple weeks as we all wait for the Big Bread Sale.

Steven

For more posts on this subject, click on Home Pride Bread.