What good is going out to eat if the restaurant doesn’t bring bread to your table? You’ve placed your order, and you can see everyone around you enjoying their food. Naturally, you’re going to be hungry, and you’re not going to want to wait what feels like hours for your meal to come out. Even if you ordered appetizers, you still have to wait. This is where the savior comes in: the bread. Bonus if they bake it fresh right in-house.
It turns out there’s actually a sneaky reason for restaurants dolling out this freebie, according to The Los Angeles Times. Aside from giving hungry diners something to do before their food arrives, there’s also some science behind it. The carbs in bread cause your body to produce insulin, which in turn actually makes you hungrier even though you’re eating. Despite lacking any real nutritional value, some restaurant breads are simply too good to pass up—especially if they’re made fresh. Of course, most chain restaurants get their bread shipped to them frozen to maintain consistency among their numerous locations. But these six chains bake their own fresh bread in-house from scratch.
Texas Roadhouse
The major steakhouse chains often serve excellent free bread, but Texas Roadhouse has confirmed that its bread is, in fact, made from scratch. As a matter of fact, there’s a whole section of its website dedicated to it. The company claims that its rolls are “baked fresh every five minutes,” so every table gets buns fresh out of the oven.
Diners rave about them, too. In a Reddit poll asking which restaurant has the best free bread, Texas Roadhouse came out on top, thanks in part to the honey cinnamon butter that accompanies the rolls.
Red Lobster
Red Lobster admits that most of its seafood is frozen rather than fresh, so it’s a bit shocking that the chain’s famous cheddar biscuits are actually made in-house—sort of. An employee broke down the process in a Reddit AMA. The mix gets shipped to the restaurant from headquarters, and one of the cooks has the sole responsibility of adding water, forming the biscuits, and brushing them with garlic butter once they come out of the oven. Sounds like a pretty good gig. Should you have a hankering for their biscuits, though, you can also buy them frozen at your local grocery store.
Buca di Beppo
Buca di Beppo is arguably best known for two things: its massive family-sized portions and its mozzarella garlic bread. The bread is exactly what it sounds like garlic bread topped with gooey melted mozzarella and sprinkled parmesan. According to the restaurant’s website, the bread is baked fresh. Fans of Buca bread raved when the restaurant posted a photo of it on Facebook. One even commented, “I DREAM OF BUCAS GARLIC CHEESE BREAD!”
Cracker Barrel
Cracker Barrel is practically synonymous with comfort. The company is well aware of this, devoting a whole page on its website to detailing how its food is made with “care.”
Despite its footprint of more than 660 stores, Cracker Barrel makes an effort to maintain its homegrown roots. The beef is roasted for 18 hours, the chicken is hand-breaded, and the biscuits are rolled by hand. In a blog post for National Buttermilk Biscuit Day, Cracker Barrel revealed that its restaurants not only have an oven dedicated solely to baking biscuits but even have custom rolling pins and biscuit cutters designed to make the biscuits distinctly Cracker Barrel.
Logan’s Roadhouse
The Southern steakhouse chain Logan’s Roadhouse says its scratch-made yeast rolls have become a brand icon since the chain’s inception in 1991. Logan’s has also introduced made-from-scratch buns from the legendary yeast roll recipe, which they say will bring “the same delicious flavor and taste in every bite” of their half-pound steak burgers and sandwiches.
Some food bloggers have attempted copycat recipes for Logan’s buns with ingredients ranging from honey and butter to milk powder and dry yeast. In any case, online chatter suggests that for a lot of Logan’s fans, the Roadhouse rolls are the real reason they choose to dine there.
Fuddruckers
Fuddruckers is a chain that prides itself on using fresh ingredients. According to its website, the restaurants never freeze their beef, and they make their burger buns in-house every day. A Fuddruckers in Billings, Mont., even shared a video recipe for the buns on Facebook, revealing that the dough is fully made from scratch.
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Luke Gralia