When you’re looking for a loaf of fresh bread to make a sandwich, a tray of cupcakes to celebrate your child’s birthday, or a single donut to enjoy with your cup of coffee before work, where do you go? As much as we love going to small, local bakeries, they can often be quite pricey. If you’re looking for a more affordable option, you may decide to head to a grocery store bakery counter. If you visit a good one, you’ll find a wide array of baked goods, ranging from dinner rolls to chocolate chip cookies.
Before you buy any of those items, though, you might want to read up on the mistakes people tend to make at grocery store bakery counters. By learning what these common mistakes are and how to avoid them, you’re more likely to get exactly what you’re looking for. You’ll be navigating the bakery section like a total pro in no time.
Selecting fruit and whipped cream-topped bakery items from the cold case
One of the best places to buy a cake for a get-together is at a grocery store bakery. You can often find cakes at very good prices, and a lot of them are pretty solid on the flavor front. But just because a bakery displays a cake doesn’t mean you should necessarily buy it. According to a former Whole Foods cake decorator, you shouldn’t buy fruit and whipped cream-topped cakes or other items from a cold case at your local grocery store bakery.
This is because these cakes can often be a day old or so, and if you’re not getting a freshly made cake, there’s a good chance that the whipped cream and fruit are already past their prime. If you’re curious when the cakes you’re looking at hit the floor, just ask one of the staff members — they can help you decide whether you want to buy one of those fruit and whipped cream cakes. But if you don’t know when they were put out, you might be better off skipping them entirely.
Thinking you have to slice your own loaf of bread
Sure, you can always pick up a loaf of mass-produced sliced bread at your local grocery store, but let’s be honest: A lot of times, those types of bread don’t taste very fresh. If you’re looking for something that feels slightly higher quality, you should head to the bakery counter. There, you should find plenty of fresh (or, at least fresher) loaves of bread. Some might even be unsliced. If you don’t like to slice your own bread at home, you may assume that you should avoid these loaves completely. However, you might be able to get your loaf of bread sliced in-store.
Just ask a staff member to slice your bread, and they should be able to help you within a few minutes. In some cases, you may even be able to choose how thick you want the slices to be. This allows you to select whichever loaf of bread looks best to you without worrying about slicing it yourself later.
Touching baked goods with bare hands in the self-serve section
You’ll find a self-serve section at many grocery store bakeries. These sections often hold single small bakery items, like bagels, grocery store donuts, muffins, and croissants. And somewhere near that section, you should find bags to put your bakery items in, gloves to wear, plastic to cover your hand with, and tongs to use when you’re reaching into each individual section. It’s a mistake not to use any of these hygienic tools to avoid reaching into a self-serve section with bare hands.
Many will consider you straight-up rude for not using gloves, even if you don’t actually touch anything you’re not going to buy. But it’s even worse if you’re touching food that you don’t eventually purchase. To keep things as clean and as sanitary as possible, remember to use the provided hygienic tools out of consideration for the people who will buy those baked goods after you’re done.
Assuming a cake will feed fewer people than it actually will
When you’re hosting a party or other event, it can be difficult to figure out how much food you’ll need, whether you’re hosting an intimate dinner party for four or you’re going all-out with a massive birthday party. A lot of the time, people overestimate how much food they’ll need, especially when it comes to cake. Remember, cake can be pretty dense, which means a cake that looks relatively small is still probably able to feed a lot more people than you might think it could when picking it up from a grocery store bakery.
For example, one Redditor discovered that a 25-pound cake was way too much to feed 40 people at a party. You don’t want to make the same mistake and end up with wild quantities of cake left over after the event ends (or maybe you do, in which case, carry on). If you’re not really sure what size cake you need to feed a specific number of guests, ask someone who works at the grocery store bakery counter. They should be able to point you to a cake that’s an appropriate size.
Not requesting your seasonal favorites outside of the season they’re usually offered
If you’re like us, then you might sometimes find yourself randomly getting a craving for a seasonal flavor at a totally different time of year than you’d usually enjoy it. For example, you might start daydreaming about pumpkin spice cupcakes in June, or perhaps you want some gingerbread cookies in February. Of course, you can always make the treats yourself, but if you want a professional version of those baked goods, you may be able to get them at your local grocery store bakery.
We can’t guarantee that you can actually get all of your favorite seasonal baked goods at different times of year, but it’s a mistake not to ask the bakery if they can make them for you. Of course, you’ll have to call the bakery or otherwise contact the staff in advance, but depending on the grocery store, you might just be surprised how amenable they are to making whatever it is you’re craving.
Not asking to speak to the cake decorator yourself
There are times when you want a grocery store cake that just about any generic decoration will do. And then, for some events, you might want a more customized decoration. Whether you want to spell out a name and someone’s age on their birthday or you’re grabbing a cake for a 25th wedding anniversary party, you’ll want to make sure that the staff at the grocery store bakery counter really gets it right. And this becomes even more important if you’re looking for a very specific decoration on the cake.
Technically, you should be able to place an order online or over the phone, but there’s a lot that can get lost in translation if you do things this way. Therefore, it’s a mistake not to try to talk to the cake decorator there yourself. They’ll be able to tell you more about your options and what they can do for you. Try to speak to someone who works at the bakery counter directly — you’re much more likely to end up with a cake that actually looks how you want it to look.
Leave a Reply