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Cake does not encapsulate and is therefore toast.
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
vaguely threatening gesture You're toast, cake.
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.
Wrong. Cake is a frosting sandwich.
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.
A hotdog is a a taco, most certainly, but don't calzones have stuff contained within?
I guess going by this logic, bread is a calzone with bread filling. doesn't make a lot of sense to me tbh.
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 youβre quite literally pouring the batter into a mold or pan of some sort rather than placing it inside, itβs a cake. Or a muffin. Or a cupcake.
Should also be noted that cakes are usually leavened chemically rather than with yeast. You donβt usually allow a cake batter to rise like you do with a bread dough.
Are pumpkin/banana/zucchini breads still bread in this definition?
From my experience, no. Theyβre made from batters and poured into a loaf pan, causing the iconic shape. If you frosted them theyβd be a cake like any other.
whole category of cakes are called βquick breadβ (ex. banana bread) because theyβre baked in a loaf pan (they get the name from the shape rather than the ingredients)
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.
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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.
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).
Irish soda bread
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.
Cake is bread but bread isn't Cake.
Unless you're American
Do bagels count as cake based on calorie count or bread based on texture/flavor or doughnuts based on shape?
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.
Never heard of fried cake. In my native language that's sure a word not interchangeable with what I would translate cake to
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).