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Is cake a sort of bread? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 months ago by Binette@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

93 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So according to Merriam Webster bread is: a usually baked and leavened food made of a mixture whose basic constituent is flour or meal

And cake is: A: a breadlike food made from a dough or batter that is usually fried or baked in small flat shapes and is often unleavened B: a sweet baked food made from a dough or thick batter usually containing flour and sugar and often shortening, eggs, and a raising agent (such as baking powder)

And yet some people don't think that cake is bread.

What's your opinion?

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[–] cerement@slrpnk.net 16 points 3 months ago (2 children)

whole category of cakes are called “quick bread” (ex. banana bread) because they’re baked in a loaf pan (they get the name from the shape rather than the ingredients)

[–] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

they get the name from the shape rather than the ingredients

I was under the understanding that the main difference was that quick breads used chemical leavening agents (e.g. baking powder) instead of yeast. Hence the "quick" in "quick bread". Wikipedia (always a source of unblemished truth /s) seems to agree with my understanding.

[–] Nefara@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yep, Irish soda bread is a quickbread made from a dough with baking soda as the rising agent, and it is absolutely a bread, not a cake.

[–] boatswain@infosec.pub 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's much closer to a cake, really; it's a batter more than a dough. It's not sweet though, which is a defining factor for a lot of people.

[–] Nefara@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I'm not sure if you've tried making it but the recipes that I have tried all result in a dough that's capable of standing on its own as a boule. If you do an image search you can see a lot of images of Irish soda bread with X score marks baked in to their tops, which you couldn't make with a liquid batter.

[–] boatswain@infosec.pub 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

When I make it it's much wetter than that and definitely needs to to poured into a bread pan. This is for Irish Brown Bread, not for the white flour soda bread with currants and whatnot.

[–] Nefara@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Here's a picture of the dough from a similar recipe to what I use

If you do a search for "Irish soda bread" you'll get almost all the same kind of pictures of X cut boules with some kind of add ins. Sounds like the brown bread is something different, but it's probably still yummy.

[–] boatswain@infosec.pub 1 points 3 months ago

Yeah, that's much different than the brown bread my family calls Irish soda bread. Here's the recipe:

½ lb./225g whole wheat flour (1-3/4 c.)
3 oz./75g unbleached white flour (2/3 c.)
1½ oz./40g porridge oatlets (3 heaping Tbsp.) (steel cut oatmeal or John McCann--in a tin)
1½ oz./40g wheat bran (1 c.)
1½ oz./40g wheat germ (1/2 c.)
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
1 pint/600 ml buttermilk (2-1/8 to 2-1/3 c.)

Preheat a cool oven, 300ºF/150ºC/Gas mark 2.
Grease and flour a 2 lb./900g loaf tin (I use an 8-1/2 x 4-1/2 x 2-5/8 inch bread pan).
Mix all the dry ingredients together thoroughly. Then, add them to the buttermilk and mix quickly to make a wet dough (I have found it better to use only 500 ml or 2-1/8 c. buttermilk). Turn into loaf pan and bake in the preheated oven on the very bottom shelf for 2 to 2-1/4 hrs. When cooked, the bread will shrink from the pan slightly and sound hollow when rapped on the bottom with the knuckles.

[–] polonius-rex@kbin.run 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

i'd argue banana bread is cake, and is not bread, even though it has "bread" in its name

if you were offered a slice of banana bread but they were out so you got a slice of sandwich loaf instead, i suspect you'd be more annoyed than if you got a slice of chocolate cake

[–] RoquetteQueen@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 months ago

And the texture of actual sweet breads is way different than the texture of banana bread. Breads are chewy, cakes are crumbly.