98 Fun Facts About Bread

Which two by-products does yeast give off as it ferments the sugars in bread dough?

Carbon dioxide and ethanol. Bakers want only the gas, which inflates the dough, while brewers and winemakers using the same yeast are after the alcohol instead.

Which protein complex gives wheat dough its sponginess and elasticity?

Gluten. Kneading links two wheat proteins, glutenin and gliadin, into an elastic network that traps the gas from fermentation and stretches with it, which is why wheat loaves rise so well.

Which species of yeast, also used in brewing, is most commonly used to leaven bread?

Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Packaged baker's yeast is a pure culture of it, grown by methods that followed Louis Pasteur's work, which is why it acts faster and more predictably than a wild starter.

Besides wild yeast, which bacteria ferment a sourdough starter and give it its tang?

Lactobacilli. The lactic acid they produce gives the loaf its sour taste and also helps it keep, so a sourdough stays good for longer than an ordinary yeast bread.

Which ancient people are credited with discovering raised bread and developing baking ovens?

The Egyptians. Bread became so central that it worked as pay: labourers on royal projects such as the Giza pyramids drew daily rations of loaves from huge state bakeries.

Pliny wrote that the Gauls and Iberians leavened bread with foam skimmed from what?

Beer. The yeasty foam, known as barm, worked as a ready-made leaven, and Pliny noted that it gave those peoples a lighter bread than anyone else's.

The Chorleywood bread process swaps hours of fermentation for minutes of what?

High-speed mixing. About three minutes of intense mechanical working develops the dough, which let bakers use cheaper low-protein British wheat and brought down the price of a loaf.

Loaves raised with baking soda or baking powder rather than yeast are called what?

Quick breads. Baking soda and baking powder release their gas as soon as the batter is mixed and heated, so the hours of rising that yeast needs are skipped altogether.

Calcium propanoate, a common preservative in factory-baked bread, is added mainly to hold off what?

Mould. The additive sounds industrial, but it is a salt of propionic acid, the same compound that bacteria produce naturally in Swiss-type cheeses such as Emmental.

Besides adding flavour, what does salt do to the yeast in a bread dough?

Restricts its activity. Salt draws water out of the yeast cells, which slows fermentation, and it strengthens the dough as well: without it the dough turns slack and sticky and the bread tastes bland.

What browning process between sugars and amino acids colours a bread crust?

The Maillard reaction. Besides colour it creates hundreds of flavour compounds, which is why the crust tastes richer and more complex than the inside of the loaf.

Which unusual American loaf is leavened by Clostridium perfringens rather than yeast?

Salt-rising. The same bacterium is a common cause of food poisoning, yet no illness has ever been traced to this Appalachian bread, and despite the name it is not raised by salt.

Medieval English bakers are said to have added a 13th loaf to every dozen for fear of punishment for what?

Selling short weight. Laws tied a loaf's size to the price of wheat and punished cheats with fines or a flogging, so, the story goes, bakers threw in an extra loaf: the baker's dozen.

Which English title comes from the Old English hlafweard, literally "guardian of the loaves"?

Lord. The head of an Anglo-Saxon household controlled its bread, so his servants were called "loaf-eaters", and "lady" is thought to come from a word meaning "bread-kneader".

Which Roman poet coined "bread and circuses" to mock a public that cared for nothing else?

Juvenal. In his tenth Satire he complained that Romans who had once handed out commands and high office by vote now longed only for the free grain dole and the chariot races.

Which flour, milled from a tiny Ethiopian grain, is traditionally used for injera?

Teff. The batter is left to ferment for days before it is poured onto a hot griddle, which gives injera its sour tang and the bubbly holes that soak up the stews served on it.

In the famous tale, the Earl of Sandwich asked for meat between bread to avoid leaving what?

The gaming table. The tale about John Montagu, the 4th Earl, comes from a French travel book of his own day; his biographer thinks he more likely ate that way during long hours at his desk.

Which party won support in Russia in 1917 by promising "peace, land and bread"?

The Bolsheviks. The bread was meant literally: that year's revolution had begun with women in the capital marching to demand it after wartime shortages emptied the shops.

What reason did American officials give for briefly banning sliced bread in January 1943?

Wartime conservation of wrapping. Sliced loaves needed heavier wax paper to keep from drying out, but after a public outcry the ban was lifted within two months.

The 1830s Paris bakery that introduced the croissant's ancestor and the steam oven was named after which city?

Vienna. August Zang's Boulangerie Viennoise sold the crescent-shaped kipfel that became the croissant; he later gave up baking, went home and founded the daily newspaper Die Presse.

In October 1789, Parisian market women angry at the price of bread marched on which royal palace?

Versailles. What began as a bread riot ended the next day with the crowd escorting Louis XVI and his family back to Paris, which ended the king's independence.

Which bread roll is shaped into a ring, boiled briefly, then baked?

Bagel. The brief boil seals the dough before it bakes, which gives the roll its dense chew and shiny crust, and the hole once let sellers carry batches threaded on a pole.

In the best-known story of the pretzel's origin, an Italian monk twisted strips of dough to resemble what?

Hands folded in prayer. In the tale he gave the twists to pupils who had learned their prayers and called them pretiola, little rewards, though other accounts credit French monks or German bakers.

What gives traditional pretzels their dark, shiny skin?

A lye or washing-soda bath. The alkaline dip makes the surface brown faster and darker in the oven, and German bakers give the same treatment to lye rolls and even lye croissants.

Which American state, settled by German immigrants, is the birthplace of the hard-pretzel industry?

Pennsylvania. German-speaking settlers, later known as the Pennsylvania Dutch, brought the pretzel with them in the 1700s, and Julius Sturgis turned it into a business with his bakery in the town of Lititz.

Ciabatta was created in 1982 by an Italian baker in response to the popularity of what?

French baguettes. Miller Arnaldo Cavallari feared the imports were taking over Italy's lunch trade, so he spent weeks testing doughs and launched a rival loaf named after the slipper it resembles.

Which Italian flat oven bread takes its name from the Latin word for "hearth"?

Focaccia. The Romans baked their panis focacius under the ashes of the fire, and the same Latin word for hearth, focus, later gave English its word for a centre of attention.

Braided challah is served on the Sabbath and most Jewish festivals, but is off the table throughout which one?

Passover. All leavened food is forbidden for the whole festival, so flat, unleavened matzo takes the loaf's place at the table for about a week.

Which American city, where a French baker began using gold miners' starter in 1849, is famed for its sourdough?

San Francisco. Boudin Bakery says every loaf it bakes there is still raised with a piece of the same mother dough that its founder, Isidore Boudin, started in 1849.

Naan is traditionally slapped onto the inner wall of which oven?

A tandoor. Its clay walls can reach about 480 °C, so the dough sticks, puffs and bakes in a few minutes, which is how naan gets its scorched brown spots.

Traditional pumpernickel, the dense black bread of Westphalia in Germany, is made from which grain?

Rye. The loaf's name began as a German insult for a lout, built from words meaning "to break wind" and "goblin", before it stuck to Westphalia's heavy black bread.

Before the Spanish arrived, the tortillas of Mexico were made from which grain?

Maize. Cooks first boiled the kernels with lime, which softened them and loosened their hulls, and then ground them on a stone into a dough that could be patted flat.

Irish soda bread rises when baking soda reacts with the acid in which ingredient?

Buttermilk. Its lactic acid sets the soda fizzing the moment the two meet, so the dough is stirred together in moments, barely handled and put straight in to bake.

At a medieval feast, a "trencher" was a thick slice of stale bread that served as what?

A plate. The bread soaked up the juices of the meal, and when wooden boards took its place by the 14th century they kept the name trencher, from the French for "to cut".

Lavash, a thin flatbread that keeps for months when dried, is a staple of which country?

Armenia. Women bake it together in groups, and at weddings a sheet of lavash is laid over the shoulders of the newlyweds to bring them fertility and prosperity.

Panettone, the tall Christmas sweet bread, is associated with which Italian city?

Milan. The dough is raised like a bread with a fermented starter, and each loaf is hung upside down while it cools so that its tall, airy dome does not collapse.

Damper is a simple flour-and-water bread baked in campfire coals in which country?

Australia. Swagmen and drovers on the road carried flour rather than bulky baked loaves, mixed it with water wherever they camped and cooked the dough in the hot ashes.

The croissant's flaky layers come from which technique of folding butter into dough?

Laminating. Rolling and folding stacks up dozens of alternating sheets of dough and butter, and in the heat the water in the butter turns to steam and forces the layers apart.

Brioche owes its rich, tender texture to a high content of butter and what?

Eggs. Brioche is the real loaf behind "Let them eat cake": the French original says "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche", a line there is no evidence Marie-Antoinette ever spoke.

In the Christian Eucharist, the bread shared by worshippers is received as what?

The body of Christ. Churches still disagree over the recipe: Roman Catholics use thin unleavened wafers, most Eastern churches insist on leavened loaves, and each side once had an insulting name for the other.

Pita is also nicknamed what, for its hollow centre?

Pocket. In a very hot oven the water in the dough flashes to steam and puffs the loaf up like a ball; it sinks flat again as it cools, but the two layers stay apart.

Which American brand began selling sliced bread nationwide in 1930?

Wonder Bread. Buyers at first needed reassuring that a ready-cut loaf would not dry out, yet sliced bread soon became the yardstick for every great invention.

In bread-making, a poolish and a biga are both types of what?

Pre-ferments. Each is a portion of the flour, water and yeast mixed many hours ahead and left to ferment, which gives the finished loaf a deeper flavour and helps it keep longer.

British law requires vitamins and minerals to be added to most wheat flour, but which kind is exempt?

Wholemeal. It keeps the whole grain, so the iron and B vitamins that milling strips out of white flour are still naturally present and nothing has to be put back.

Mantou, the soft white buns of northern China, are cooked by which method rather than baking?

Steaming. The buns stay pale and soft, and they are the everyday staple of northern China because that is wheat country, while rice is the crop of the south.

Bakers state the water in a dough as a percentage of the flour's weight, a figure known as the dough's what?

Hydration. Flour always counts as 100, so 60% hydration means 60 grams of water for every 100 of flour; push it much higher, as bakers do for ciabatta, and the loaf opens up into large holes.

What is bread's internal porous structure called, as opposed to the crust?

The crumb. It hardens as bread goes stale, though not because it dries out: its starch slowly recrystallises, fastest of all in the fridge, so even a sealed loaf turns stale.

Hot cross buns, the spiced buns of British bakeries, are traditionally eaten on which day?

Good Friday. The cross on top stands for the Crucifixion, and the rich, spiced dough marks the end of the plain eating of Lent.

In 2020, Ireland's Supreme Court ruled that which sandwich chain's rolls could not legally be classed as bread?

Subway's rolls held sugar worth about a tenth of the flour's weight, five times the limit Irish tax law sets for bread, so they missed the tax break given to staple foods.

Which Victor Hugo hero spends nineteen years as a convict after stealing a loaf of bread for his sister's children?

Jean Valjean broke a baker's window to take the loaf in the winter of 1795, and his attempts to escape helped stretch the sentence in Les Misérables.

Which West Bank town, a place of Christian pilgrimage for centuries, has a Hebrew name meaning 'house of bread'?

Bethlehem is Bet Lehem in Hebrew, 'house of bread', while its Arabic name, Bayt Lahm, literally means 'house of meat'.

Which everyday word for a friend comes from the Late Latin for a 'bread fellow', someone who shares your loaf?

Companion joins the Latin com, 'with', and panis, 'bread', and reached English through Old French around 1300.

Which breakfast bread, despite its name, was popularised in the 1880s from a New York bakery run by Samuel Thomas?

The English muffin was made in Manhattan by an immigrant from England, who pitched it to fine hotels as a more elegant alternative to toast.

Which kitchen appliance for bread did American inventor Charles Strite first patent in 1921?

The pop-up toaster ejected each slice by itself once it was done, and a redesign sold as the Toastmaster became the first automatic pop-up model for the home.

Irish barmbrack, a fruit loaf, hides a ring and other fortune-telling charms when baked for which festival?

Halloween barmbrack doubles as a fortune-telling game, with a pea, a stick, a scrap of cloth and a coin hidden in the loaf beside the ring.

Bánh mì, a crisp roll stuffed with pâté, pickled carrot and coriander, is the signature sandwich of which country?

Vietnam took up wheat loaves under colonial rule in the mid-19th century, and bánh mì, a word that simply means 'bread', was a staple by the early 20th.

Which sweet loaf, a favourite use for overripe fruit, became a fixture of North American cookbooks in the 1930s?

Banana bread is usually raised with baking powder or soda instead of yeast, and some food historians credit its rise to Depression-era cooks who would not throw away overripe bananas.

Swedish crispbread was traditionally baked as a round with a hole in the middle so that it could be stored how?

Hung on a pole near the ceiling, the rounds had to last, because crispbread was traditionally baked only after the harvest and again when the frozen rivers thawed.

Pão de queijo, chewy cheese rolls made with cassava flour instead of wheat, are a breakfast staple of which country?

Brazil's cheese rolls come from the state of Minas Gerais, and the cassava flour is what makes them chewy inside and crunchy outside.

Bunny chow, a hollowed-out loaf of white bread filled with curry, is a fast food born in which country?

South Africa's bunny chow began among the Indian community of Durban, where locals order by loaf size and filling, as in a 'quarter mutton', and eat it with their fingers.

Khachapuri, a leavened bread baked with a molten cheese filling, is the national dish of which country?

Georgia takes the dish seriously enough that economists there track a 'khachapuri index', using the cost of making one to measure inflation.

Which country, among the world's top agricultural exporters, is often called the 'breadbasket of Europe'?

Ukraine owes the nickname to its fertile steppe and to chernozem, a black soil prized for its richness.

Which dense biscuit of flour and water fed sailors and soldiers for centuries because it kept so long when dry?

Hardtack was so tough that the troops who lived on it nicknamed it 'molar breakers', 'sheet iron' and 'worm castles'.

Under Jewish law, which crisp unleavened bread must be in the oven within 18 minutes of water touching the flour?

Matzo is made against the clock because dough is held to start leavening 18 minutes after it gets wet.

Melba toast, thin and crisp, was created by chef Auguste Escoffier for a famous performer in which profession?

Opera singer Dame Nellie Melba also inspired Escoffier's peach Melba dessert, so one performer has two dishes to her name.

The usual French name for French toast, pain perdu, has which literal meaning in English?

Lost bread is the point of the dish: soaking and frying rescues stale slices that would otherwise be thrown away.

In 2012 Sainsbury's renamed its tiger bread after a letter from a three-year-old girl suggested which animal instead?

Giraffe bread took its new name after the girl's letter and the supermarket's reply spread across her mother's social media accounts.

The Great Fire of London began in 1666 in the bakery of Thomas Farriner on which street?

On Pudding Lane the blaze broke out shortly after midnight on Sunday 2 September, and an hour later the parish constables wanted the adjoining houses pulled down.

In The Hunger Games, which baker's son once gave a starving Katniss bread from his family's bakery?

Peeta Mellark becomes District 12's male tribute beside Katniss, and during the Games District 11 sends her a loaf of its own in gratitude.

Which Great British Bake Off star studied sculpture at art school before leaving to join the family business?

Paul Hollywood left art school for his father's bakery, later ran the bakeries of several luxury hotels, and became a Bake Off judge when the show launched in 2010.

Which American bakery-café chain grew out of the St. Louis Bread Company, founded in Missouri in 1987?

Panera took its present name in 1997, from a word meaning 'breadbasket' in Spanish and Catalan, and kept the original name on its cafés around St. Louis.

The pineapple bun, a sweet bun that contains no pineapple at all, is a bakery favourite most popular in which city?

Hong Kong's pineapple bun is named for its looks alone: the sugary topping resembles the textured skin of the fruit.

Pandesal, a soft roll whose name means 'bread of salt', is a breakfast staple of which Asian country?

In the Philippines the roll is made with sugar as well as salt, despite its name, and is the country's everyday breakfast bread.

Which term do bakers use for the final rest, after a loaf is shaped and before it goes into the oven?

Proofing is called proving in Britain, and it gives the yeast a last chance to puff up the shaped dough before the heat sets it.

Boule, a traditional round shape of rustic French loaf, takes its name from the French word for what?

Ball is what boule means, and the word names only the shape: a boule can be made from any flour and raised with baker's yeast or a sourdough starter.

The Japanese word for bread, pan, was borrowed in the 16th century from the language of which European country?

Portugal also gave Japanese tabako, its word for tobacco, in the same first wave of loanwords from Europe.

Kaya toast, layered with butter and coconut jam, is said to be the creation of Hainanese immigrants in which port city?

Singapore's kaya toast is said to have been adapted from food the cooks had made on British ships, and it remains a staple of the city's coffee shops.

During which gold rush did veteran prospectors earn the lasting nickname 'sourdoughs' for the starter they relied on?

Klondike old-timers kept a pot of live starter because packaged yeast and baking soda were far less reliable in the conditions they faced.

Bara brith, a tea loaf of dried fruit and spices whose name means 'speckled bread', is a tradition of which nation?

In Wales the loaf is flavoured with tea as well as fruit and spices, and chefs such as Bryn Williams have championed it as a symbol of the nation's cookery.

Parker House rolls, folded buttery dinner rolls invented in the 1870s, are named after a hotel in which American city?

Boston's Parker House Hotel gave the rolls their fold: a round of dough is flattened into an oval with a rolling pin, then doubled over.

Zwieback, a crisp sweetened rusk commonly given to teething babies, has a German name with which literal meaning?

Twice baked is also the meaning behind the French biscotte and Italian fette biscottate, both built from the Latin bis, 'twice', and coctus, 'baked'.

Which future film director shot Boy on the Bike, the 1973 television advert for Hovis bread?

Ridley Scott went on to direct Alien, while the 13-year-old on the bike, Carl Barlow, left acting and became a firefighter.

In April 1863, hungry women looted shops in the largest of the Southern bread riots in which Confederate city?

Richmond had swollen from 38,000 people in 1860 to over 100,000 by 1863, and it sat at the end of a long, vulnerable supply line.

Otto Rohwedder, who built the first commercial bread-slicing machine, originally trained and worked in which trade?

Jeweller Rohwedder owned three shops and sold them all to fund his slicer, drawing on what he had learned from working with watches.

In Iceland, pots of dark hverabrauð dough are traditionally left to bake slowly after being buried where?

Near a geyser the ground itself is hot enough to cook the loaf in its pot, and the Icelandic name simply means 'hot-spring bread'.

The Pullman loaf, a white loaf baked in a long lidded tin, was chosen for the kitchens of what form of transport?

Railway cars had tiny kitchens, and three of the flat-topped loaves fitted into the space taken by two ordinary round-topped ones.

Grissini, the pencil-thin crisp breadsticks found on Italian restaurant tables, originated in which northern city?

Turin's tradition credits a 17th-century baker called Antonio Brunero, though a 'bone-thin' loaf was described in a town near the city as early as 1643.

The bialy, a bread roll with an onion-filled dimple at its centre, is named after a city in which country?

Poland's city of Białystok gave the roll its name; it belonged to the cooking of the city's Jewish community, which was destroyed in the Holocaust.

Lefse, a soft flatbread made with riced potatoes, butter and cream, is a tradition of which country?

Norway's lefse takes special tools to make: a potato ricer, long wooden turning sticks and rolling pins cut with deep grooves.

The 1912 'Bread and Roses' strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, was staged by immigrant workers in which industry?

Textiles were the trade of Lawrence's mills, and the walkout there was led by the Industrial Workers of the World.

Bread goes stale mainly because which component of the flour slowly recrystallises as the loaf ages?

Starch molecules realign and harden as a loaf ages, and a fridge speeds this up, so chilled bread stales sooner than bread left out.

White flour is milled from which part of the wheat grain, once the bran and the germ have been stripped away?

The endosperm alone makes white flour; brown flour keeps some of the germ and bran, and whole-grain flour uses the entire grain.

No-knead bread, the method that swept home kitchens after a 2006 New York Times column, swaps kneading for what?

A very long rise of 12 hours or more lets the dough build its own stretchy structure, at the cost of a loaf that takes far longer to make.

The grade milled from hard wheat especially for bread-making is commonly sold under which name?

Strong flour is unusually rich in protein, so its dough stretches further and holds more gas, which is what makes it so good for yeast-raised loaves.

Which razor-edged tool, named from the French for 'blade', does a baker use to slash the top of a loaf?

A lame often has a slightly concave edge, which lets the baker cut flaps of dough far thinner than a straight razor could manage.

Tangzhong, a Chinese-named technique for softer bread, begins by cooking a little flour and liquid into what?

A roux of flour cooked in water or milk to about 65 °C improves the loaf's texture and slows the rate at which it goes stale.

Which flour improver, used to strengthen dough and give taller loaves, is banned in many countries over a cancer risk?

Potassium bromate carries the additive number E924 and is rated a category 2B carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Coco bread, a soft bun made to be split and stuffed with a patty, comes from which Caribbean island?

Jamaica's coco bread owes its name and its slightly sweet taste to the coconut milk in the dough.