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?
Do bagels count as cake based on calorie count or bread based on texture/flavor or doughnuts based on shape?
Cake is just uppity bread. Acting all fancy and getting dressed up for special occasions. You changed, bro.
it’s a doctrinal difference
also you could possibly look at something like gluten formation, but i suspect there’s a gluteny cake out there as well as a glutenless bread
cornbread
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?”
Although clear examples of the difference between cake and bread are easy to find, the precise classification has always been elusive. For example, banana bread may be properly considered either a quick bread or a cake. Yeast cakes are the oldest and are very similar to yeast bread. Such cakes are often very traditional in form and include such pastries as babka and stollen.
A hotdog is a a taco, most certainly, but don’t calzones have stuff contained within?
I suppose jet thinks that brad is a calzone with bread/dough filling
Wrong. Cake is a frosting sandwich.
Cake does not encapsulate and is therefore toast.
Many cakes have some sort of filling between flat layers and are therefore sandwiches.
Charlotte royale is a calzone, tho.
vaguely threatening gesture You’re toast, cake.
Cake can also be in layers with ingredients inbetween, making a sandwich.
The speciality cakes with images in them when you cut them could be considered sushi
I guess going by this logic, bread is a calzone with bread filling. doesn’t make a lot of sense to me tbh.
Only if it has filling in the center specifically. Many cakes would actually be sandwiches by this definition, and those without filling would be toast.
Also, I take issue with all open-ended wraps being lumped in as sushi.
There is even at least one variety of cake literally called a sandwich, the Victoria Sandwich.
This would technically only be true for cakes with filling - a normal cake doesn’t have 6 sides of carbs, it’s all the way through.
I’ve never make a cake from dough. I’ve always make cake from batter.
Never heard of fried cake. In my native language that’s sure a word not interchangeable with what I would translate cake to
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)
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Not bread. Cake doesn’t use yeast (leavened basically means using yeast). Bread does.
Cake uses eggs, bread doesn’t.
Cake is expensive to buy or make. Bread isn’t as bad.
I think we clearly know it’s not bread. Back me up here someone. I’m the person being referred to in the OP btw.
Egg bread exists.
What’s your argument about eggs now?
what the actual hell is egg bread
I still believe myself to be in the right and the majority of people I’ve spoken to have agreed with my opinions.
It’s just not bread. It’s just not.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/6879/a-number-one-egg-bread/
There’s also cake that uses yeast/leavening:
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/215136/drozdzowka-polish-yeast-plum-cake/
So I’m pretty sure the ingredient angle is out, unless you want to go by proportion of sugar/flour/whatever, which is a much more involved discussion, but IMO, will also be a fruitless one…
I don’t think ingredients are the dividing line here between cakes/breads, IMO, it might be texture/consistency of the loaf, but even that’s a hard sell. There are some very dense breads and some very airy cakes.
I’m more leaning towards “cake” being a label we put on bread products when we deem it appropriate.
The fact that a lot of this was defined by medieval standards, where people did some pretty strange things, especially with naming, IMO, is the root of the problem. Today, as we create new things we have specific terms for them that defines that thing and limits on what the thing is and isn’t. A lot of scientific naming has been refined in the last century because of the bad/inaccurate naming of things, mainly because they were named and defined well before we had the technology to properly understand what we were looking at.
Culinary arts, which can be scientific, but the naming certainly isn’t, is not an exact science. If you take either of the above recipes and add an extra quarter cup of flour or something to either, it probably won’t ruin the product. It might make it taste different than intended, but probably not ruined.
In all the difference between cake and bread is blurry at best. At worst, cake is just a specific type of bread product, which is defined fairly loosely by how we feel about it.
As a related fact, muffins and cupcakes have been in a war for which one is better for you. Cupcakes can have fewer calories, but muffins seem to have better marketing, so people feel like they’re better/more healthy, than eating cupcakes.
I dunno, I’m just some guy.
Cake doesn’t use yeast (leavened basically means using yeast).
some cakes do use yeast, and something like baking powder is a leavening agent
Cake uses eggs, bread doesn’t.
brioche
Cake is expensive to buy or make. Bread isn’t as bad.
brioche
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?
No but like something being bread like doesn’t mean that it is bread, just similar to bread.
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.
You don’t need cake. You do knead bread.
You don’t need cake. You don’t need bread either.
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.
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
Yes. Flour, water, heat. That’s it. Tortillas are bread. Cake is bread. Crackers are bread.
