Use your loaf: when only sliced white bread will do

The humble bacon sandwich, for one, just isn't the same if you don't use sliced white bread. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA

Things are looking crummy for sliced, wrapped bread. A report by retail analysts Kantar notes that there was a 1.8% drop in sales last year, equivalent to 31m loaves. The numbers make no distinction between white bread and brown. No matter how much of the wholegrain is left in, if it's sliced and in a bag, some of us just ain't buying it. But what are we eating instead? Nick Hughes, author of the carb-heavy bread report for the Grocer magazine, says that ordinary sliced loaves are facing competition from imposters such as thins, wraps, pittas and bagels, which saw a rise in popularity over the same period.

Always keen to adopt the culinary habits of other nations, Britons are apparently seduced by novelty even if the new food is, well, made up. It is now possible to buy circular sandwich pittas, and wraps made into squares. Some have a lighter calorie load: a Warburton's seeded square wrap has 181 calories, whereas two slices of its seeded batch bread comes in at 274. But you can't make a toastie from a bagel, and a chip pitta lacks devil-may-care snack appeal.

There are, of course, plenty of people – breadheads, if you will – who contend that bagged bread is absolute filth. It is the devil's doings, full of hidden additives that manufacturers aren't obliged to declare, made for speed, economy and shelf-life rather than flavour, and potentially hairier than any of us might like. They have a point, and, in the Real Bread Campaign, an organisation encouraging us to support proper bakers or have a go ourselves.

In her book How to Eat, Joanna Blythman offers the same advice as the Real Breaders. "Choose bread made with the four essential ingredients: flour, water, yeast, salt. Any other ingredients should be readily recognisable ones," she writes. She's absolutely right, of course, But there are occasions that make even cooks including the venerable Nigel Slater rip open a bag of sliced bread, probably white. Some things aren't quite the same with real, whole loaves of bread – or, indeed, pittas – and here are five of them:

Toastie: The best toasties are runny. Cheese, cheese and ham, and cheese and baked beans with HP sauce must all be contained in a hot, crispy shell. Cheap bread, with its stretchiness and habit of sticking together, is made for the task. Wraps are not.

Bacon sandwich: Made with bagged bread, the bacon sandwich is a unique beast with a distinctive soft chew. It tastes of home, hangovers, or both, and the blandness of the bread means it?will take any sauce. See also: fish finger sandwich.

Melba toast: Thanks to its unnatural consistency and spongy skin, sliced white makes excellent melba toast. Grill quickly on both sides and a knife will glide through the middle, allowing the cook to split it into two squares for further toasting.

Egg and soldiers: Toasting and buttering brings out the best in plastic bread. Toast brings out the?best in boiled eggs. A good breakfast brings out the best in everybody. You can't make soldiers out of bagels.

Apple charlotte: Compared to summer pudding (which demands real bread), apple charlotte is admittedly, a niche interest, but it's much better with bagged bread. Buttered and fitted neatly around the dish, it won't crumble or fall, even when it's the only thing that stands between you and a tidal wave of apple fluff.

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