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?

  • sylver_dragonEnglish
    9•1 month ago

    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
      4•1 month ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
        1•1 month ago

        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
          1•1 month ago

          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.

          • @[email protected]
            1•1 month ago

            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
              1•1 month ago

              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.

              • @[email protected]
                1•1 month 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.)
                1. Preheat a cool oven, 300ºF/150ºC/Gas mark 2.
                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).
                3. 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.