Bread: Encyclopedia II - Bread - Breads across different cultures

Bread - Breads across different cultures

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 Britain 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, pan 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 bread made from granary flour, trademarked to Hovis made from malted white or brown flour, wheatgerm and 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 - Bread in Germany

Germany has the widest variety of bread available to its residents. 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.

Bread - 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.

Bread - 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 unleavened 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; mackerel in tomato sauce; 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.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Breads across different cultures", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki