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?
Cake is just uppity bread. Acting all fancy and getting dressed up for special occasions. You changed, bro.
As a general rule, I would see in a majority of cases that in a bread, gluten development is encouraged to provide a chewy texture. In a cake, you want to avoid gluten development to have a light and fluffy texture.
Special bread flours have high gluten content and cake flours have lower gluten for that reason.
Now we of course do have many exceptions, such as banana bread is low gluten and very sweet, while many biscuit recipes call for cake flour, but no one would call a biscuit a cake. In both those cases, I don’t think you would like a banana bread or biscuit that has the strong gluten structure that a proper baguette has.
Cakes (especially something like donuts) can be yeast risen, and some breads like matzo or tortillas have no leavening, or breads can use chemical leavening like Irish soda bread.
I wouldn’t consider banana bread a bread. It’s a cake and the bread part is just a name.
I personally agree with you on that. Anything much sweeter than raisin bread like muffins and cupcakes I count as cakes.
If gluten is required, then gf bread isn’t bread. But anyone who’s eaten gf bread would call it bread. Different but still bread.
I don’t know if I’ve ever had GF bread, so I had to look up how it’s made. I wondered how the bread would have the proper structure to rise without a gluten matrix, and it seems I was on to something. Reading up on it a bit, gums and starches are used to replace the function of the missing gluten. So while GF bread has no gluten, it’s still made with a gluten replacement, and the same function is required for proper results.
If we change my qualifier to bread typically having a deliberately developed structural matrix with high elasticity, it covers wheat and GF breads. It still is fairly universal we want chewy breads and non-chewy cakes.
bread typically having a deliberately developed structural matrix with high elasticity,
Cake fits into this, I’d say.
Cake is not bread.
According to Urban Dictionary, cake is: Another word meaning ass or butt.
Bread is: The shit you throw at ducks to get them to fuck off.
I once had a similar thought and reached the conclusion that based on dictionary definitions, everything can be categorized as either a soup or a salad.
Cake and bread are actually the same since they are both soups.
What is pizza?
Salad obviously
But the pizza base is bread, and bread is a soup.
If it fits loosely under the food pyramid category and I can therefore eat a ton of it and say it’s just my daily bread, then yes.
But sugars are at the top and we all know the higher a thing is the more important it is. Can we double-dip on the chart? Also yes.
food pyramid
You’re really showing your age with this one. The food pyramid got replaced 13 years ago
Wow, the dairy industry must’ve paid a lot to get that spot replacing water. Milk is atrocious for diet and filled with bad fats, with little added nutritional value. At least cheeses are condensed protein and fat. Not considering that most of the world is intolerant to it.
Cake was bread historically
I think all other dough-based dishes derive from bread really, since I believe it’s the most basis dough recipe ye can make…
Nowadays, my definition of modern cake = bread + defined-sweetness + fluffiness and softness
My proof that cake was bread; look at pound cake, one of modern cake’s forerunners, and tell me no one thought and baked it, thinking “how about bread, but more deluxe?”
I think the clue is in the definition you posted:
a breadlike food.
As a german I would say that bread and cake are very similar, but distinct things, even though the border is very blurry. Take brioche, I think that’s more of a bread, but it’s very soft, moist and sweet, so it leans heavily towards cake.
I’d say in general bread is more savory or neutral, made to be eaten with something, and cake is sweet and supposed to be a food on it’s own.
that’s what I don’t get. OP posts how they specifically aren’t the same and then goes on like he didn’t just write that.
cake is: A: a breadlike food
Why are you questioning the definition you’ve provided?
If you google the question, you’ll get lots of people saying that cake isn’t bread, despite being similar.
I think it’s that people like certain levels of specificness. Like, bread, pizza, and broccoli are all foods, but if you said “I had a food for lunch” that’d sound weird.
It’s not necessarily that cake isn’t a type of bread or that the two aren’t closely related. It’s that we have a super-common and more specific word for it (cake) so it sounds awkward when you use a different word that might be technically accurate, but is a weird choice in practice.
Same for a lot of things. A hot dog and a sub are technically the same thing. But if a waiter dropped off your hot dog and said “here’s your pork sub”, you’d probably look at them funny.
You asked the question, “is a cake a sort of bread” and the dictionary is explicitly stating “cake is a breadlike food”.
Are you instead asking if “lots of people” is a more reliable source than the dictionary?
Something can be breadlike without being bread, in a similar way to how whales are fishlike without being fish.
The dictionary doesn’t dictate how words should be used; it reports how people use them. Consulting a dictionary is a way to find out how “lots of people” use a word.
No but like something being bread like doesn’t mean that it is bread, just similar to bread.
All words are made up, so if you would like to define cake as a bread then I see no problem with that personally.
I am unsure if others would agree with you, but they might given specific context.
Personally, I don’t care too much, all I know is that cake it delicious.
P.S. There are definitely cakes that are not at all bread like though, like ice cream cake or cheese cake etc.
Do bagels count as cake based on calorie count or bread based on texture/flavor or doughnuts based on shape?
My argument: Bread is leavened and whose basic mixture is flour or meal. (Usually baked, but so are most cakes so I’ll leave this as moot.)
If a cake can meet those requirements, Yes, it would be a bread.
Otherwise, it would be a breadlike food. In the cake definition it uses a “breadlike food” probably due to to the latter half of the statement “often unleavened”. This would lead me to presume that most cakes, while breadlike, do not meet the requirements. It’d be more reasonable to make a statement on the majority (breadlike) than minority (Bread).
Bread usually has yeast, a cake never does.
Lots of cakes in Germany for example are traditionally made from yeasted doughs
What about pancakes?
They aren’t a cake, and they don’t have yeast either
I always used yeast when doing a cake, so the dough rise.
Whenever it comes down to definitions I like to go to expert definitions rather than common language. For food (are tomatoes a fruit?) I use FDA definitions, for which the definition of bread excludes what you’d mean by “cake”.
- Layman readable synopsis (bakerpedia)
- Sec. 136.110 Bread, rolls, and buns. (fda)
- Sec. 136.115 Enriched bread, rolls, and buns. (fda)
I don’t think the FDA defines cake, but it does specify how different types of cakes, brownies and such should be labeled (search for “cake” here).
Sort of, yeah. If you asked me to categorize foods as “bread-like” or not, I would definitely count cake. But I would probably not make a sandwich with cake.
Oh would you not? Then what is the jelly or frosting fillings between the layer? Isn’t that A JELLY SANDWICH??
(I am being aloof for the purpose of humor)
It’s not every day that a comment makes me self-reflect and challenge my beliefs like this.
Thank you for opening my mind, Buglefingers. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do.
