There’s been a lot of talk in recent days about what type of bread each of us identifies with. According to guests on the ABC, white Anglo men – responsible for all the world’s great atrocities like the killing fields in Cambodia; the pogroms in the old USSR; the slaughter in Rwanda – eat only white bread. Also, according to some appearing on the ABC, working-class Australians only eat brown bread.
So, what sort of bread are you? The following simple guide will help you delve into your doughy identity and find your true bread type.
White bread: you are cloistered in your ivory tower made entirely of lily-white dough. You have no idea of the trials and tribulations of those around you. You dine in outrageous luxury; the envy of Olympus, and you spit on those beneath you on the social pyramid. You’re also probably a white male and the Prime Minister of a Western democracy, or whatever.
Brown bread: You’re a true working-class battler who fought three world wars with Phar Lap. You’ve shoveled shit, toted bales, swabbed decks, battened down hatches, run things up flag poles, and every day you’ve worked up a hard-earned thirst that needs a big cold beer.
No one understands the struggles you go through every day just to put meat and three veg on the table.
You’re also an academic in social studies at a university in Sydney.
Multigrain: You’re quite indecisive by nature and the consummate swinging voter. You’re not sure if you’re wealthy enough to fit in with the white bread elites, and yet you fear rejection by your parents’ generation of hard-working, shit-shovelling, dinky dye, working-class brown bread academics from Sydney Universities.
So, while the fibres that hold you together are generally white bread, you sprinkle your social experience with the grains of the working class.
Baguette: You’re a bit of a leech. You generally make a mess of your own nest and then look to others to bail you out. Despite allies coming to your rescue, you cry and moan when they don’t also give you the largesse you believe you are innately entitled to.
Damper: You’re old and hard, baked in the raw campfire of the Aussie bush. You find city folk are weak, flakey and don’t give a tinker’s cuss about country people. Some pretend to know everything about you and talk as if you’re their long-lost ‘country cousin’. Most dismiss you as a recipe of a bygone era. However, when things are dire, you’re always there, ready to help those who need you most.
Brioche: You’re a fake – nothing more than a snake-oil salesman. You pretend to be the ‘bun of the people’ however, your sickly-sweet flavour and glossy texture soon turn the stomach and distort the overall experience of whatever meal you’re paired with. You’re almost never followed to your natural conclusion, discarded on the side of the plate well before the rest of the meal is finished. You also have a nasty habit of ‘repeating’ on people, heralding a bout of re-flux whereby people are subject to bitter bile. You may also have been a Prime Minister for either the ALP or Coalition.
Tortilla: People are always trying to build walls around you.
Challah: Your life’s journey has been long and sometimes you’ve found yourself wandering in a desert – sometimes it’s felt like 40 years! You finally found your way to Hollywood and have done very well for yourself. Many from the left of politics hate those who have persecuted you throughout history, but strangely also support those who hate you now.
Obi Non: You’ve fled the turmoil of your war-torn homeland and come to Australia to start a new life. Coincidentally, you’ve also become extremely popular with the Star Wars cosplay community who refer to you as ‘Master Jedi’.
Rye Bread: No one really understands you. You look like brown bread, taste like sourdough, have the consistency of some sort of cake, and find yourself on the same menu as white bread. You’re essentially an enigma.
Pita Bread: People often warm to you, however, some have accused you of being quite hollow.
Brad Emery is a Sydney writer, former political staffer, and sometime baker.
