Panera Cinnamon Raisin Bread — Attention must be paid

If you take one bite I guarantee you it will not be the last one.

I happened on this widely available item yesterday when I went down to the Barracks Road Shopping Center to run a few errands and decided, just as an experiment, to test out two known free WiFi hotspots there: Panera

and Greenberry's Coffee.

Greenberry's at Barracks Road is the founding store, the first location of this very successful chain; they've had free WiFi from the get–go but don't advertise the fact.

Greenberry's is a perfect 10 as regards their WiFi: you open up your laptop, it searches for the WiFi signal, then asks if you want to join the network, you click "yes" and you're on.

Fast, easy, and open: no filtering.

Panera is another story: everything's just like Greenberry's until you try to visit bookofjoe: up pops a screen saying "Blocked."

Most likely a vestige of a previous incarnation.

Maybe I'll contact the URL given on the "Blocked" screen to have them unblock it or maybe I'll just shrug and move on.

In any event, I could still post stuff to bookofjoe and all since TypePad's not blocked: I simply couldn't see the blog itself.

While I was fiddling around I got hungry so I ordered a loaf of their cinnamon raisin bread to snack on while I played.

I had them slice it for convenience, which I'd never do if I were taking it home 'cause it jumpstarts the deterioration of the loaf, what with all the additional exposed surface area.

But you knew that — didn't you?

But I digress.

Hey, that bread was good!

The raisins are fresh — plump and moist; the cinnamon is heady; but best of all is a kind of jammy sticky stuff swirled throughout the loaf.

On the web page for the bread

it says molasses is the secret sauce but whatever it is, it makes the bread sublime, crunchy within wherever your mouth happens to find this sweet treat.

Bonus: the top of the bread is covered with confectioner's sugar.

I ate half the loaf before I got out of there.

But wait — there's more.

This morning I made toast with the last seven slices, with just the barest sheen of butter applied as each emerged from the toaster oven.

Heavenly.

Outstanding and cheap at twice the $3.69 a loaf price.

One last note: have you ever noticed that bread and bagels in the toaster oven are noticeably darker when they emerge than they seemed just an instant before, while they were inside?

Perhaps up in a corner of the window it should say, "Objects in oven may be browner than they appear."