Sorry you don't understand what bay leaves do.

They are essential to Cajun cooking and I can immediately taste when they're missing, as can most people.

Double blind trial requested.

Take two cups of hot water, steep a couple bay leaves in one, taste. People act like bay leaves are hard to taste, which is strange; they definitely have a taste.

In water, yes. In a flavorful dish, it depends. On the leaves themselves, on the dish, etc

I’ll try it, thanks.

Grocery store bay leaves are tasteless, at least around where I am. Good ones (I get them from Penney’s) are highly flavorful and add a noticeable flavor to soups and sauces. I even found myself thinking that I’d put too much bay leaf in a pot of beans once, it was threatening to overwhelm the other flavors.

I did not now that at leaf denialism was a thing. I use it regularly with roasts and stews, and it’s fine. I can see how one could not like its taste, but going on a crusade or being upset about other people using it sounds a bit much.

Not upset, just joking around about an ingredient that I haven’t personally seen bring a lot of added flavor to a recipe, but given the passionate responses, I might have to reconsider my position.

Fair enough! I can agree to disagree :)

In my experience whenever you have a slow simmering anything and it “feels like something’s missing” – you forgot the bay leaf.

No I have no idea what it actually adds to the flavor. It feels pointless. But skip the leaf and you can always tell.

Like the sibling comment says, make bayleaf tea. Taste it on its own. If you get your bay leaves from the store, you'll probably find it to be incredibly mild. If they're plucked fresh from a bay laurel, there's actual flavor to be had.

In the US, fresh bay leaves are often not the same plant as the dried bay leaves your recipe expects. Find good dried bay leaves, and/or use more than the recipe asks for.

I can't find info on this, can you share something please? I'm skeptical of bone dry ones being preferable in any case (besides needing to have good sourcing then for imported dried ones). they don't dry like oregano does and I don't know that they are so much worse like most non sicilian oregano

I believe that a large handful of fresh leaves would influence flavor. My comment is directed at a single dry bay leaf that I have seen on many occasions.