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> canonical definition of bread. Love it! Spoken like a true engineer :) The process of Baking is what makes a Bread a bread. If it's not baked in an oven, it
by sean_patel 10y ago
> canonical definition of bread.
Love it! Spoken like a true engineer :)
The process of Baking is what makes a Bread a bread. If it's not baked in an oven, it's not Bread. I didn't make that up, that what has defined a Bread since the beginning of time :)
Dosa is fried on a stovetop pan. Appam is cooked on a stovetop pan. Iddiappam is steamed on stovetop using water. None of these are baked at any time in the process.
- DanBC 10y agoCornbread, traditionally cooked in a skillet, isn't a bread? Most people I know would call English muffins a bread product.
- sean_patel 10y ago> Cornbread, traditionally cooked in a skillet, isn't a bread? It's not. Americans have a strangely funny way of naming things. Only in America would you find "Orange Juice" that would say in the ingredients. "Contains no juice. Artifically flavored and coloured." English muffins are baked goods, not breads.
- greglindahl 10y agoSource for the "orange juice" claim? You're thinking of products like "Sunny Delight Beverages Orange", which you should note does not call itself "orange juice". Even in the US, that's not allowed. Skillet bread, on the other hand, is bread, as are english muffins.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jff 10y agoBhatura are deep fried, roti are pan-fried. Edit: basically, India doesn't have a particularly big tradition of oven baking, so by a definition of "bread must be baked" you're gonna have a lot of things that aren't bread.
- sean_patel 10y agoCorrect. Bhatura is fried dough.
- tptacek 10y agoSo is bannock bread!
- tptacek 10y agoThe process of baking is almost definitely not what makes a bread a bread. We had breads long before we had ovens, and we have things that are indisputably breads today that aren't cooked inside ovens. Even today, we can readily cook breads that are typically cooked in an oven over a suitably large open fire or uncovered grill. A bread is a solid stable foam created by heating a dough made primarily of milled plant matter and water. There are no breads that aren't foams, and there are no breads I'm aware of that made primarily of something that isn't plant matter or that hasn't been crushed or otherwise processed to create a homogenous dough with a water-based liquid.
- pcrh 10y ago>A bread is a solid stable foam Another engineer I'd bet :-)
- sean_patel 10y agoROFL.
- tptacek 10y agoIt's not my idea; it's Harold McGee's.
- moultano 10y ago>A bread is a solid stable foam created by heating a dough made primarily of milled plant matter and water. The most common Indian bread, the roti, is not a foam. It's a very flat bread made of wheat flour and water with no internal structure.
- tptacek 10y agoI'm pretty sure it is; it's just a foam of very small bubbles. It's the little pockets of air in bread (usually made by escaping steam, from the water in the dough) that make it tender and palatable. The most obvious foam structure we think about with bread are the big bubbles inside a sourdough or tuscan loaf. But the foam that, say, Harold McGee is thinking about when he describes bread as foam is occurring at a smaller scale. A communion wafer, for instance, is indisputably bread --- extremely thin, with no discernible internal structure --- but it's also basically a very thin slice of styrofoam.
- alphakappa 10y agoNit: Dosas don't need to be fried. They are often just made on a non-stick pan without oil. Sometimes with a touch of ghee on top for flavor, but again, not for frying.
- moultano 10y agoSo roti isn't bread? That's a strange definition.
- solipsism 10y agoThat is not how words work. First of all, bread has existed for much longer than the word "bread". And any translation into another (perhaps earlier) language is bound to be imperfect. Things called "bread" don't line up perfectly with things called "pan" in Spanish. Stop looking for precision in words. If you want to talk about "things that are baked in an oven" then say that.
- jasim 10y ago> The process of Baking is what makes a Bread a bread. Says who? The dictionary? It can change. You forget that language is a social construct, and like it or not, India is a country of a billion people with a different cultural context and we're going to make words up, or overload new meanings to existing words. And there is nothing you can do about it. That's how language works. You could claim ownership over it and try to dictate and browbeat alternate usages, but come to India, and try telling them that Appam is not a Bread, they'll tell you "of course not, Appam is an Indian Bread".
- eastern 10y agoEnglish-speaking Indian living in India here, been eating rotis, naans, parathas, bhatirey, dosa, appams every day for half a century. ALWAYS thought of all these as Indian breads. So does everyone else. For example, look at the menu of a famous Indian restaurant: https://www.zomato.com/ncr/bukhara-itc-maurya-chanakyapuri-new-delhi/menu https://www.zomato.com/ncr/bukhara-itc-maurya-chanakyapuri-n... There are countless other menus on that site that do the same. The article gets it absolutely correct.
- sridca 10y agoEnglish-speaking South Indian (Tamil) living in Canada & India here. NEVER thought of dosas, idlis, idiyappam, uthappam, etc. as a "bread".