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Is cake a sort of bread?

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?

SuiXi3D ,
@SuiXi3D@fedia.io avatar

As a former bakery owner: No, not at all. Cakes are made with loose batters, ideally with very little gluten. Breads are made with doughs, ideally with a bunch of gluten. Of course there are some formulas that might blur the lines a bit, but in general if you’re quite literally pouring the batter into a mold or pan of some sort rather than placing it inside, it’s a cake. Or a muffin. Or a cupcake.

Should also be noted that cakes are usually leavened chemically rather than with yeast. You don’t usually allow a cake batter to rise like you do with a bread dough.

nilloc ,

Are pumpkin/banana/zucchini breads still bread in this definition?

SuiXi3D ,
@SuiXi3D@fedia.io avatar

From my experience, no. They’re made from batters and poured into a loaf pan, causing the iconic shape. If you frosted them they’d be a cake like any other.

cerement ,
@cerement@slrpnk.net avatar

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)

sylver_dragon ,

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 ,

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.

boatswain ,

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 , (edited )

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.

boatswain ,

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 ,

Here’s a picture of the dough from a similar recipe to what I use https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/c0c7cb56-ef7f-4f1c-aaba-4efe716b227d.jpeg

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.

boatswain ,

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.
polonius-rex ,

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

RoquetteQueen ,
@RoquetteQueen@sh.itjust.works avatar

And the texture of actual sweet breads is way different than the texture of banana bread. Breads are chewy, cakes are crumbly.

CanadaPlus ,

Yes, cake is bread. This is controversial because of the savoury vs. sweet distinction we have, but there’s no consistent way to include all the breads of the world without including Western cakes too.

jol ,

I think saying cake is bread is like saying scrambled eggs is an omelette.

CanadaPlus ,

Isn’t it more like saying an omelette is scrambled eggs? And yes, actually, the only difference between a scramble and omelette is shape.

jol ,

The ingredients used in both are also different. Don’t have to be, but usually are.

CanadaPlus ,

Interesting. What would you expect in one but not the other? I can’t think of anything, but it might be regional.

Plain scrambled eggs would be the scramble equivalent of a baguette with just flour, water and salt. An omelette loaded with things might be more like the cake.

jol ,

Exactly. And there are sweet brrads like brioche that are almost cakes. And plain cakes like banana “bread”. By point exactly is that scrambled eggs are more usually plain, and omelettes are more usually rich with other ingredients, but prepared differently, like how bread is kneaded but cake not.

CanadaPlus ,

I’d say cakes are all bread, but not all bread is cake. Likewise, I’d say omelettes are a type of egg dish, as are plain scrambled eggs, but not all egg dishes are one of those.

If you kept to Western cuisine you could argue bread as a distinct category both within “homogeneous baked goods” or something, but then ingera (for example) would probably end up being a cake, and that’s not quite right. It’s more important that bread include all solid grain-based staples the world over than that it exclude Western cake, IMO.

N0body ,

Cake is just uppity bread. Acting all fancy and getting dressed up for special occasions. You changed, bro.

MeowZedong ,
@MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml avatar

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.

anon6789 ,
@anon6789@lemmy.world avatar

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.

RoquetteQueen ,
@RoquetteQueen@sh.itjust.works avatar

I wouldn’t consider banana bread a bread. It’s a cake and the bread part is just a name.

anon6789 ,
@anon6789@lemmy.world avatar

I personally agree with you on that. Anything much sweeter than raisin bread like muffins and cupcakes I count as cakes.

GrayBackgroundMusic ,

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.

anon6789 ,
@anon6789@lemmy.world avatar

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.

GrayBackgroundMusic ,

bread typically having a deliberately developed structural matrix with high elasticity,

Cake fits into this, I’d say.

Nikls94 ,

theguardian.com/…/irish-court-rules-subway-bread-…

Depends on sugar.

MTK ,

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.

Agent641 ,

What is pizza?

dizzy ,
@dizzy@lemmy.ml avatar

Salad obviously

Agent641 ,

But the pizza base is bread, and bread is a soup.

MTK ,

Ask yourself this: is it cooked?

If it is, it’s soup, if it’s not, it’s a salad.

And if some parts of it are cooked and some are not, it is a salad and a soup mixed in some way.

Pizza would just be soup. Sushi for example is a soup and salad combo, since the rice is cooked (soup) and the filling is usually fresh (salad)

Hextubewontallowme , (edited )
@Hextubewontallowme@lemmy.ml avatar

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?”

meekah ,
@meekah@lemmy.world avatar

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.

ASeriesOfPoorChoices ,

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.

wreckedcarzz ,
@wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world avatar

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.

ltxrtquq ,

food pyramid

You’re really showing your age with this one. The food pyramid got replaced 13 years ago

dustyData ,

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.

oxjox ,
@oxjox@lemmy.ml avatar

cake is: A: a breadlike food

Why are you questioning the definition you’ve provided?

Binette OP ,

If you google the question, you’ll get lots of people saying that cake isn’t bread, despite being similar.

Xoriff ,

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.

oxjox ,
@oxjox@lemmy.ml avatar

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?

Binette OP ,

No but like something being bread like doesn’t mean that it is bread, just similar to bread.

Eylrid ,

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.

oo1 ,

You don’t need cake. You do knead bread.

LemmyKnowsBest ,

You don’t need cake. You don’t need bread either.

Alaskaball ,
@Alaskaball@hexbear.net avatar

Cake is bread but bread isn’t Cake.

Unless you’re American

SweetCitrusBuzz ,
@SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org avatar

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.

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