Sometimes I buy the bread lol. The bread just gets made into other things if nobody buys it. Sliced after the first day, made into croutons the day after or a number of other bread goodness like garlic bread or used to make those pre-packed subs, etc. Or it’s just tossed cause bread is cheap and making at the scale they make it makes it even cheaper.
By the way, if you have even a passing interest I recommend baking your own bread, unless you want sourdough and you don’t want to spend that effort cause sourdough is next level effort. But a basic white bread is extremely easy and tastes so good fresh and lasts for soooo much longer than the store made breads.
I bake my sourdough weekly. Once you have your sourdough it is pretty much the same effort, but you don’t have to use yeast anymore and you need to plan a bit more time for the bread to rise. It is worth it for the taste.
I’d love to get into it but I just don’t have the time to get past the initial start up. Plus after work I am just exhausted and I definitely don’t have the fortitude to make it a weekly ritual (not to mention we just don’t eat that much bread). Maybe someday though.
If you ever want to try it but have no interest to make the starter, just ask around in your community. More often than you think there is this one person who has their sourdough and is more than happy to share it. I shared mine multiple times over the years, because I know getting started is no fun at all.
You can also freeze the sourdough to use from time to time or keep it in the fridge and just refresh it weekly to bi-weekly by mixing some of it with a bit of water and flour.
I had the opposite experience with it lasting longer. My homemade sandwich loaf will not last more than a week without molding… Supermarket bread (the mass produced stuff, dunno about the made in store stuff) is packed with preservatives and seems to last at least two.
But it’s so much better that it was never going to last that long anyway.
I usually make two and freeze one
For us the deli bread lasts 3 days on average, the regular store bought bread lasts like actually forever but it’s awful so not worth it, the bread I made lasted more than a month. We did however store it in the fridge and I’m sure the recipe and how you handle it are critical.
Since apparently it’s so cheap to make and so much of it gets thrown away anyway, you’d think they just lower the price of it. The reason I don’t buy that kind of bread is it usually way more expensive.
The like artisanal type breads? Like the brioche and the sourdough and all that? Hell that’s a deal. I can get a French loaf for a dollar but that’s about it.