Bread

For other uses, see Bread (disambiguation).

Pre-sliced bread has become more and more common in many countries

Pain aux noix (nutty bread)

Breads are a group of staple foods prepared by baking, steaming, or frying dough consisting minimally of flour and water. Salt is present in most cases, and usually a leavening agent such as yeast is used. Some sorts of bread also contain spices (such as caraway seed) and grains (sesame, poppy seeds). Grains are also used for decorative purposes.

Bread may be eaten alone, often with butter, peanut butter, or other nut butter, or a sweet spread such as preserves, jam, jelly, marmalade, Vegemite, honey, or used as an enclosure for a sandwich. It may have been only baked, or subsequently toasted, and may be served anywhere from room temperature to hot.

Unwrapped bread can be stored in a breadbox to keep it fresh longer. It actually stales more quickly in the low temperature of a refrigerator, although it is less likely to mold.

Etymology

The word itself, Old English bread, is common in various forms to many Germanic languages; such as German Brot, Dutch brood, Swedish bröd, and Norwegian brød; it has been derived from the root of brew, but more probably is connected with the root of break, for its early uses are confined to broken pieces, or bits of bread, the Latin frustum, and it was not until the 12th century that it took the place—as the generic name for bread—of hlaf (modern English loaf), which appears to be the oldest Teutonic name; Old High German hleib and modern German Laib, or Finnish leipä, Estonian leib, and Russian khleb are similar (all are derived from Old Germanic).

Types

Bread is a popular food in Western and most other societies except for the Asian societies that typically prefer rice. It is often made from a wheat-flour dough that is cultured with yeast, allowed to rise, and finally baked in an oven. Owing to its high levels of gluten (which give the dough sponginess and elasticity), wheat is the most common grain used for the preparation of bread, but bread is also made from the flour of rye, barley, maize (or corn), and oats, usually, but not always, in combination with wheat flour.

Leavening

Leavening is the process of adding gas to a dough before baking to produce a lighter, more easily chewed bread. Most bread consumed in the West is leavened. But there is also unleavened bread which has important symbolic use in Judaism (Matzo) and is used by some Christian churches.

Chemical leavening

A simple technique for leavening bread is the use of gas-producing chemicals. There are two common methods. The first is to use baking powder or a self-rising flour that includes baking powder. The second is to have an acidic ingredient such as buttermilk and add baking soda. The reaction of the acid with the soda produces gas.

Chemically-leavened breads are called called quick breads and soda breads. This technique is commonly used to make muffins and sweet breads such as banana bread.

Yeast leavening

Many breads are leavened by the fungus yeast. The yeast ferments carbohydrates in the flour and any sugar, producing carbon dioxide. Most commercial and home bakers in the U.S. leaven their doughs with baker's yeast. Baker's yeast produces uniform, quick, and reliable results.

It is difficult to say when humans first discovered fermentation as a means to leaven doughs, but leavened breads seem to have originated in ancient Egypt. A popular theory is that Egyptian beer brewers must at some point have discovered that when the foam from the fermenting vessels is mixed into their doughs, it will result in a much lighter and airy flatbread. Beer brewing and bread baking are similar crafts in many ways.

Both the baker's yeast, and the sourdough method of baking bread follow the same pattern. Water is mixed with flour, salt and the leavening agent (baker's yeast or sourdough starter). Other additions (spices, herbs, fats, seeds, fruit, etc.) are not necessary to bake bread, but often used. The mixed dough is then allowed to rise one or more times (a longer rising time results in more flavor, so bakers often punch down the dough and let it rise again), then loaves are formed and (after an optional final rising time) the bread is baked in an oven.

Many breads (such as the famous baguette) are made from a straight dough, which means that all of the ingredients are combined in one step, and the dough baked after the rising time. Alternatively, doughs can be made with the starter method, when some of the flour, water, and the leavening are combined a day or so ahead of baking, and allowed to ferment overnight. On the day of the baking, the rest of the ingredients are added, and the rest of the process is the same as that for straight doughs. This produces a more flavorful bread with better texture. Many bakers see the starter method as a compromise between the highly reliable results of baker's yeast, and the flavor/complexity of a longer fermentation. It also allows the baker to use only a minimal amount of baker's yeast, which used to be scarce and expensive when it first became available.

Sourdough

The sour taste of sourdoughs actually comes not from the yeast, but from a lactobacillus, with which the yeast lives in symbiosis. The lactobacillus feeds on the byproducts of the yeast fermentation, and in turn makes the culture go sour by excreting lactic acid, which protects it from spoiling (since most microbes are unable to survive in an acid environment). All breads used to be sourdoughs, and the leavening process was not understood until the 19th century, when with the advance of microscopes, scientists were able to discover the microbes that make the dough rise. Since then, strains of yeast have been selected and cultured mainly for reliability and quickness of fermentation. Billions of cells of these strains are then packaged and marketed as "Baker's Yeast". Bread made with baker's yeast is not sour because of the absence of the lactobacillus. Bakers around the world quickly embraced baker's yeast for it made baking simple and so allowed for more flexibility in the bakery's operations. It made baking quick as well, allowing bakeries to make fresh bread from scratch as often as three times a day. While European bakeries kept producing sourdough breads, in the U.S., sourdough baking was widely replaced by baker's yeast, and only recently has that country (or parts of it, at least) seen the rebirth of sourdough in artisan bakeries.

Sourdough breads are most often made with a sourdough starter (not to be confused with the starter method discussed above). A sourdough starter is a culture of yeast and lactobacillus. It is essentially a dough-like or pancake-like flour/water mixture in which the yeast and lactobacillus live. A starter can be maintained indefinitely by periodically discarding a part of it and refreshing it by adding fresh flour and water. (When refrigerated, a starter can go weeks without needing to be fed.) There are starters owned by bakeries and families that are several human generations old, much revered for creating a special taste or texture. Starters can be obtained by taking a piece of another starter and growing it, or they can be made from scratch. There are hobbyist groups on the web who will send their starter for a stamped, self-addressed envelope, and there are even mailorder companies that sell different starters from all over the world. An acquired starter has the advantage to be more proven and established (stable and reliable, resisting spoiling and behaving predictably) than from-scratch starters.

There are other ways of sourdough baking and culture maintenance. A more traditional one is the process that was followed by peasant families throughout Europe in past centuries. The family (usually the woman was in charge of breadmaking) would bake on a fixed schedule, perhaps once a week. The starter was saved from the previous week's dough. The starter was mixed with the new ingredients, the dough was left to rise, then a piece of it was saved (to be the starter for next week's bread). The rest was formed into loaves which were marked with the family sign (this is where today's decorative slashing of bread loaves originates from), and taken to the communal oven to bake. These communal ovens over time evolved into what we know today as bakeries, when certain people specialized in bread baking, and with time enhanced the process so far as to be able to mass produce cheap bread for everyone in the village.

The most famous sourdough bread made in the U.S. is the San Francisco Sourdough. It is a white bread, characterized by a pronounced sourness (not all sourdoughs are as sour as the San Francisco Sourdough), so much so that the dominant strain of lactobacillus in sourdough starters was named lactobacillus sanfrancisco.

Steam leavening

The rapid expansion of steam produced during baking leavens the bread, which is as simple as it is unpredictable. The best known steam-leavened bread is the popover. Steam-leavening is unpredictable since the steam isn't produced until the bread is baked.

Steam leavening happens regardless of the rising agents (soda powder, yeast, baking-powder, sour dough, egg snow…)

The rising agent generates carbon dioxide - or already contains air bubbles.
The heat vaporises the water from the inner surface of the bubbles within the dough.
The steam expends and makes the bread rise.

It is actually the main factor in the rise. CO₂ generation, on its own, is too small to account for the rise. Heat kills bacteria or yeast at an early stage, so the CO₂ generation is stopped.

Bacterial leavening

Usually called salt-risen bread, this is an uncommon form of leavening due to its inconsistent results. However, the bread has a unique cheese-like flavor that is often desired.

Breads across different cultures

File:Sourdoughbread.jpg

Sourdough breads like this baguette (left) and roundbread begin with a starter passed down from excess batter from a previous loaf.

There are many variations on the basic recipe of bread, including pizza, chapatis, tortillas, baguettes, pitas, lavash, biscuits, pretzels, naan, bagels, puris, and many other variations.

In the British Isles and the United States, the most widely consumed type of bread is soft-textured with a thin crust and is sold ready-sliced in packages. It is usually eaten with the crust, but some eaters or preparers may remove the crust due to a personal preference or style of serving, as for high tea.
In Scotland, another form of bread called plain bread is also consumed. Plain bread loaves are noticeably taller and thinner, with burned crusts at only the top and bottom of the loaf. Plain bread has a much firmer texture than British and American pan bread. Plain Bread is becoming less common as the Bread consumed elsewhere in Britain is becoming more popular with consumers.
In France, such bread is known as pain de mie and is used only for toast or for making stuffing; standard bread (in the form of baguettes or thicker breads) has a thick crust and often has large bubbles of air inside. Some fancy breads contain walnuts, or are encrusted with poppy seeds.
White bread is made from flour containing only the central core of the grain (endosperm).
Brown bread is made with endosperm and 10% bran.
Wholemeal bread contains the whole of the wheatgrain (endosperm and bran).
Wheatgerm bread has added wheatgerm for flavouring.
Wholegrain bread is white bread with added wholegrains to increase the fibre content.
Granary bread is brown bread with added wholegrains.
Stottie cake is a thick, flat, round loaf. Stotties are common in the North East of England. Although it is called a cake, it is a type of bread.

Bread in Germany

Germany has the widest variety of bread available to its citizens. About 300 types of breads and approximately 1200 different types of pastry and rolls are produced in about 17,000 bakeries and another 10,000 in-shop bakeries.

80 million people consume around 1,100,000 tons of bread, 5,024,000,000 rolls and 454,000,000 pretzels per year. This is a world record. Bread is served with almost every meal. A German breakfast typically consists of sliced bread or Brötchen (rolls) with either cold cuts, cheese etc. or jam, honey and other sweet toppings. For supper it is usually just cold cuts and cheese. Bread is not considered a side dish and is considered important for a healthy diet. Germany's top nine in bread are:

1. Rye-wheat ("Roggenmischbrot")
2. Toastbread (white bread)
3. whole-grain ("Vollkornbrot")
4. Wheat-rye ("Weizenmischbrot")
5. White bread ("Weißbrot")
6. Multi-grain ("Mehrkornbrot")
7. Rye ("Roggenbrot")
8. Sunflower seed ("Sonnenblumenkernbrot")
9. Pumpkin seed ("Kürbiskernbrot")

Especially the darker kinds of bread like Vollkornbrot or Schwarzbrot are typical of German cuisine. Internationally well known is Pumpernickel which is steamed for a very long time, it is one kind of dark bread from Germany but not representative. Most German breads are made with sourdough. Whole grain is preferred for high fibre. Germans use almost all available types of grain for their breads: wheat, rye, barley, spelt, oats, sorghum, corn and rice. Some breads are even made from potato flour.

French Style Baking

The French are renowned for their artisan breads. By using the four basic ingredients of water, flour, yeast, and salt, the French have mastered the art of creating complex breads that widely vary, despite the fact that each loaf contains the mixture of the same ingredients. French law dictates that for “French” style breads, only the four above-mentioned ingredients may be used, along with ascorbic acid and rye flour. By manipulating rising times, kneading techniques, and with the use of specialty brick ovens, the French breads are as varied and unique as the regions in France.

Denmark and Bread

Bread is a very important part of the Scandinavian table and lunches at home or in the workplace (and in Danish restaurants) will usually be based on bread, primarily rugbrød, which is ryebread. It is a dark, heavy bread which is often bought pre-sliced, in varieties from light-coloured rye, to very dark, and refined to wholegrain. It forms the basis of smørrebrød, which is closely related to the Swedish smorgasbord, literally 'spread bread' (smør is butter). Traditional toppings include sild, which are pickled herrings (marinerede - plain, krydder - spiced, or karry - curried, being the most popular), slightly sweeter than Dutch or German herrings; thinly-sliced cheese in many varieties; sliced cucumber, tomato and boiled eggs; leverpostej, which is pork liver-paste; dozens of types of cured or processed meat in thin slices, or smoked fish such as salmon; pickled cucumber; boiled egg, and rings of red onion. Mayonnaise mixed with peas and diced carrot, remoulade or other thick sauces often top the layered open sandwich, which is usually eaten with utensils. It is custom to pass the dish of sliced breads around the table, and then to pass around each dish of toppings, and people help themselves. Hundreds of combinations and varieties of smørrebord are available. A famous and very old restaurant in Copenhagen's historic Nyhavn harbour, Ida Davidsen, serves up many imaginative combinations, and the fridge in a typical Danish home will often be stocked with toppings for rugbrødsmad, or 'ryebread meal', which is a way of saying 'a plain normal lunch'. Denmark has strong traditions of special types of food eaten at particular times of the year, such as smoked eel with slices of a sort of scrambled-egg loaf eaten on ryebread at New Year, accompanied by beer. Other types of bread are sold in supermarkets and in bakeries, which are important shops in every town and shopping centre. Many women still bake at home, particularly boller, which are small bread rolls, and often the traditional kringle, which is a long cooked dough with currants and a brown-sugar and butter paste. Home-baked bread uses moist yeast, and many thousands of packs are sold every day, the major brand being a division of Carlsberg Brewery. In the great trucking strikes of 1998, yeast was one of the first products to be sold out in shops, indicating the importance of home baking in Denmark. Sliced square white bread is known in Denmark as franskbrød, literally 'French bread', and is not as common as it is in many other western countries. People often eat jam with cheese on crusty white bread for breakfst, and also very thin slices of chocolate, called pålægschokolade. Another popular way of consuming bread in Denmark is as tiny buns for long hotdogs, like small puffy napkins made out of white bread, which are available in little kiosks everywhere and in pølservogn ('sausage-vans') that move about the cities.

History

Bread is one of the oldest prepared foods, dating back to the Neolithic era when cereal grains and water were mixed into a paste and cooked. In ancient Egypt bread-making became one of the most significant areas of food preparation, along with the making of beer; both had religious significance as well. It is thought that the Egyptians invented the first closed oven for use in baking. Bread was a primary staple of diet in much of European history, from at least 1000 BC into modern times. Over the past several hundred years, the amount of European household income spent on bread has steadily declined as per capita consumption and production costs have decreased.

Otto Frederick Rohwedder is considered to be the father of sliced bread. In 1912 Rohwedder started work on inventing a machine that sliced bread, but bakeries were reluctant to use it since they were concerned the sliced bread would go stale. It wasn't until 1928, when Rohwedder invented a machine that both sliced and wrapped the bread, that sliced bread caught on. A bakery in Chillicothe, Missouri was the first to use this machine to produce sliced bread.

For generations, white bread was considered the preferred bread of the rich while the poor ate dark bread. However, the connotations reversed in the 20th Century with dark bread becoming preferred as having superior nutritional value while white bread became associated with lower class ignorance of nutrition.

Recently, domestic breadmakers that automate the process of making bread are becoming popular in the home.

Recipes

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The following instructions to make bread were taken from the Household Cyclopedia of 1881:

"Place in a large pan twenty-eight pounds of flour; make a hole with the hand in the centre of it like a large basin, into which strain a pint of brewer's yeast; this must be tested, and if too bitter a little flour sprinkled into it, and then strained directly, then pour in two quarts of water of the temperature of 100 °F (about 40 °C), or blood heat, and stir the flour round from the bottom of the hole formed by the hand till that part of the flour is quite thick and well mixed, though all the rest must remain unwetted; then sprinkle a little flour over the moist part and cover it with a cloth; this is called sponge, and must be left to rise. Some leave it only half an hour, others all night.

"When the sponge is light, however, add four quarts of water the same temperature as above, and well knead the whole mass into a smooth dough. This is hard work if done well. Then cover the dough and leave it for an hour. In cold weather both sponge and dough must be placed on the kitchen hearth, or in some room not too cold, or it will not rise well. Before the last water is put in two tablespoonful of salt must be sprinkled over the flour. Sometimes the flour will absorb another pint of water.

"After the dough has risen it should be made quickly into loaves; if much handled then the bread will be heavy. It will require an hour and a half to bake, if made into fourpound loaves. The oven should be well heated before the dough is put into it. To try its heat, throw a little flour into it; if it brown directly, it will do."

Trivia

Bread is mentioned in the Lord's Prayer, where it may mean necessities in general.

Similarly, bread is now a common word in Britain for money from the rhyming slang "Bread and honey".

The anime and manga Yakitate!! Japan chronicles the quest of a young baker to create a 'bread that tastes better than rice'; i.e., one that the Japanese people would accept as a staple food.

The phrase "the greatest thing since sliced bread", to mean something of superlative quality, is common in the UK and United States.

Lithuanian folk saying: "Bread cries when a lazy person eats it". Refers to how difficult it was to produce bread, from sowing to baking, in antiquity.

The word "companion" literally means one with whom bread is shared (com with + pani bread).

Bread is considered to be acceptable for vegetarians, as it does not derive from animals, directly nor indirectly.

In some asian christian churches, the people eat rice cakes instead of bread served in the holy Communion.

Related patents

U.S. patent 1,867,377 -- Bread slicer
U.S. patent 1,740,038 -- Bread slicer wire
U.S. patent 1,591,357 -- Bread rack
U.S. patent 1,724,368 -- Bread staples
U.S. patent 1,759,592 -- Bread staples
U.S. patent 1,935,996 -- Bread handler
U.S. patent 2,034,250 -- Bread handler
U.S. patent 2,061,315 -- Bread handler

External links