Carlie Adams was on her way back to Arizona when her bag got pulled by security at Salt Lake City International Airport.

Expecting a strange interaction with a Transportation Security Administration agent, she pulled out her phone to record it.

“Do you have bread in here?” the agent asked her.

She did, she admitted. Six loaves.

“Let me guess,” the agent said. “Grandma Sycamore’s?”

Indeed, it was. The inexplicably addictive, incredibly soft Grandma Sycamore’s Home-Maid Bread has its fair share of critics who have said “it has a weird taste to it,” “it’s genuinely disgusting,” or called it “unhealthy cake bread.”

But it also has devout fans, driven by nostalgia and the firm belief that nothing compares.

The bread known for its “tender texture and preservative-free promise” has seemingly become a major Utah culinary export alongside fry sauce and dirty soda.

A staple bread for Utahns

Leland Sycamore’s family started selling the bread in Utah in the 1970s. The bread is made without preservatives and is baked locally at the facility on the west side of Salt Lake City.

There are a couple of reasons Riverton resident Damian Huntsman became a Grandma Sycamore superfan.

Huntsman grew up in Idaho Falls and studied at the University of Utah. But didn’t discover the bread until seven or eight years ago, when his wife brought it home from the grocery store.

“I would take that even over my grandma’s homemade bread,” Huntsman admits.

Every morning, after he takes his vitamins, he has three plain pieces of bread. When he runs marathons, he’ll take the bread with his wife’s homemade raspberry jam as a snack.

“It’s just become such a normal thing in our house. We order two to four loaves of bread a week to have it delivered here,” he said.

Huntsman isn’t afraid to share his love of the bread with others, either.

“If someone who hadn’t tried it before … I would probably tell them that Grandma Sycamore put some kind of opium or some special addictive drug in it that makes us all want it so much,” Huntsman said.

He added: “Grandma Sycamore’s bread doesn’t mold real quickly like other breads do.”

This is something a few Reddit users said they find suspicious. The Salt Lake Tribune reached out to the company that represents Grandma Sycamore’s but did not hear back.

For Salt Lake County resident Mike Campbell, the bread was a special childhood treat. He grew up in California and remembers summers in Utah where he ate Grandma Sycamore’s bread loaded with butter.

“That was like a luxury because we didn’t have that in California,” Campbell said. “Then when it came time to go home, we would go on a grocery trip and get 10 loaves of Grandma Sycamore bread, toss them in the freezer, then defrost one occasionally as a treat.”

Even though he has steady access to the bread now and considers it a “staple” and “keystone” of his life, he still considers it a “luxury” to have it so readily.

Campbell has tried the full suite of Grandma Sycamore’s items, like its sourdough bread and hot dog buns.

“I don’t really know how to articulate how it got so special, other than it was childhood for me,” Campbell said.

He ventures, though, that the craze fits right in with Utah culture.

“Utah culture is such a strange thing. I don’t know why. Why do we dirty sodas? Why is Crumbl everywhere? It’s just satisfying in a very American way,” he said. “Grandma Sycamore is definitely up there.”

It’s also sometimes used for sacrament meetings in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to Reddit users.

Packing her bags

Adams, the Grandma Sycamore devotee who was stopped by airport security, grew up in Utah before moving to Arizona. But she works for a company based in Lehi and visits twice a month.

So when a reporter called her last week to ask about her TSA encounter, she was busy with an important task. She was guiding her shopping cart down the aisles of the Lehi Harmons, with a single item on her shopping list.

“I [usually] get eight,” Adams explained, as she put the loaves into her cart.

She said that nothing compares to Grandma Sycamore’s, calling it “the best white bread” around. She uses it for everything — grilled cheese, BLTs and most especially French toast.

“It’s the taste and it’s the consistency,” she said, explaining what sets the bread apart. “It’s probably the closest store-bought bread that feels homemade. It’s really soft and chewy. It gets stuck on the roof of your mouth.”

Adams takes her loaves and then puts them into a brown carry-on bag set aside solely for bread transportation purposes. She’s not exactly alone.

A spokesperson for the Salt Lake City airport said agents see an increase in bread in carry-ons during the holidays, when people want a slice of home.

Adams said she’ll continue making her bread runs, though she’s tried lobbying her local Costco in Arizona to carry it.

“I don’t know how to get it there,” Adams said. “So many people that I know in Arizona are like, ‘How do we get this bread here? It’s the best bread.’”