There was a formula for dinner in the 1970s and 1980s and apparently no one questioned it. There would be meat, at least one vegetable, perhaps a potato dish or rice or noodles, and then there would be a stack of white bread sitting on a plate in the middle of the table. Not rolls. Not artisan bread. Certainly nothing with seeds in it. Just soft, square slices of store-bought white bread stacked six or seven high, waiting to be slathered with margarine from the plastic tub. Whether dinner was meatloaf, pork chops, fried chicken or something involving a can of cream-of-something soup, that bread was there – quietly fulfilling it’s mysterious obligation to complete the American family meal.