Review: Wegmans' Marco Polo Bread

Trying to avoid buying bread after walking through the Wegmans bread section is pretty much impossible. Between the smell, the pretty cakes, the free samples, and the feeling of being virtually surrounded by baked goods, it will pretty much destroy anyone's determination.

Marco! Polo! Bread-o! (it had to be said).

Since I already have sandwich bread at home, I decided I'd try something different out. And hi, what could be more "different" than a bulbous crown-shaped bread that has a crackling rice flour shell on top, that's called MARCO POLO bread?!

Once I got home, I cut a small wedge of the bread and tried a few bites plain, then with the peanut butter I also bought. The crackly rice flour crust (or at least that's what I think the label said it was) doesn't taste much like anything, but provides an interesting texture that is different from a normal bread crust. The bread innards were fluffy but chewy, a nice neutral base for the peanut butter. I cut up the rest of the bread, wrapped them in plastic wrap, and froze them in a Ziploc bag. So far, so good. They defrost well and I haven't had problems with staleness yet.

Final verdict? An interesting bread to look at, but if you're expecting it to taste different/better than regular bread, you may be slightly disappointed. I've heard issues of the bread going stale pretty quickly, especially with the already crunchy crust, so I would recommend the storage method I wrote about above if you don't plan on serving it to a large family or at a party the day you buy it. I like this bread, it would go great with soup, mussels, stew, basically anything that could be sopped up with large chunks of this bread. If you're interested in trying it, I'd recommend getting the mini version, like I did- it comes in Mini and Regular sizes. The Mini was $2.75, not sure how much the Regular version is.