FOOD RESOURCE COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
BREAD
Garrett, Theodore Francis (edited by). 1898. the Encyclopedia of Practical Cookery. L. Upcott Gill, 170, Strand, W.C. London. Vol. I
as an English term is said to be derived from "to bray" or grind to powder, brod, or brayed; but when the conversion of brayed meal into bread first originated, it is only possible to guess, so far back into the dark regions of man's existence does it extend.
Grimes, William. 2004. Eating Your Worlds. Oxford University Press.
is a food made of flour, water, and yeast or another leavening agent, mixed together and baked.
- ORIGIN Old English bread., of Germanic origin.
BANNOCK,BOLILLOS AND BREAD:CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN THE BAKE OVEN
Our panel today will present breads of the diverse ethnic groups of
Canada, Mexico and the United States. We could spend more time
than we have discussing definitions and categories of food known as
bread. Instead, we have used the foods which are included in both
quick bread and yeast bread chapters of basic cookbooks.
On the panel with me today are Dorothy Duncan, Director of the
Ontario Historical Society, Ontario, Canada and Janet LongİSolis,
Professor of Anthropology at Mexico University in Mexico City.
We will try to use politically correct terminology in referring to
ethnic groups, although this sometimes changes so quickly that it
is difficult to keep up. Currently, we are learning to say Native
American rather than American Indian in the U.S., but on the Oregon
State campus we're reverting to American Indian on some of the
forms students fill out. We've had an unusually high number of
students claiming to be Native Americans. They think that category
is for those born in the U.S., and our statistics are way off. In
Canada, the Indians are now called First Nations, while Janet will
call the Mexican groups ____________.
We will give our presentations first, then have a few minutes for
questions and sharing toward the end of the session.
We'll speak in alphabetical order by country today, beginning with
Canada.
Next, Mexico.
Many Native American groups in the United States make a fried dough
product called, simply, fry bread. This may be a yeast leavened
bread, but more often it is chemically leavened. Before the tribes
had baking powder or baking soda, they used wood ash, made by
burning specific kinds of trees or bushes, like juniper, to make
what some refer to as "culinary ash". My recipe from Oregon's Warm
Springs Confederated Tribes calls for selfİ rising flour, a mixture
of flour, baking powder and salt which has not been readily
available in the north until fairly recently.
Fry breads vary in size and shape according to the tribe making
them. The Warm Springs breads are solid ovals, as served in the
lodge of the resort run by the Tribes. A colleague who lived with
the Sioux in South Dakota says that fry bread must have a hole in
the center for even cooking, like a donut. Other groups have three
slashes in the center of their bread, or make cuts around the
outside of the bread circle so it will spead apart as it cooks.
Southwestern Native Americans have been using colored cornmeal for
centuries. The most popular color among the Pueblo Indians, the
Navajos and the Hopis is blue cornmeal. It has a superior flavor
and is thought to be more nutritious than yellow or white corn.
The Navajos have used it as an important food for mothers from the
time of labor until lactation ceases.
Hopi women make piki bread, a paperİ thin bread baked by
spreading thin layers of dough on hot rocks. Blue piki bread is
the everyİday color, while red or bright yellow might appear on
feast days.
My favorite name for Native American breads is kneeldown bread, so
called because the bread is baked in a fire pit, requiring the cook
to kneel through much of the baking.
Cornmeal dumplings, made from yellow, white or blue cornmeal are
often simmered in a pot of soup or stew. The Navajos make
dumplings round in the winter, but flatten them a bit in the
summer, believing that the round shape will cause sleet to fall
during that season.
Flattened oval cornbreads were a specialty of the Southeastern
Native Americans. The Indians called the breads oppones, but the
European colonists shortened that to pones, a word still in use
today. The Europeans brought skillets in which they baked their
pones, flavored with pork fat.
The Southeastern Native Americans also make blue corn dumplings,
but theirs are colored with grapes known as wild opossum grapes, or
summer grapes. In the Southeast, too, the natives made ash cakesİ
baked in the ashes of a fire. This same batter might be baked on a
hoe out in a field; called, of course, hoe cake.
The Choctaw tribe makes shuck bread by wrapping the dough in corn
shucksİ husks. These used to be made with hardwood ashes before
the modern baking powder was known.
Bannock, the Scottish griddle bread, is made by the Native
Americans in many different ways. Supposedly, they learned to make
this from British colonists. There are some unique recipes for it,
including the Chippewa one with cornmeal, ground hazelnuts and
maple syrup. Most of the bannocks could have been taken as travel
food.
Modern Southeast natives have learned to combine fruits or
vegetables like sweet potato and carrot with cornmeal to make a
sweet bread baked in an oven.
Central Europeans who have settled in the U.S. may make breads of
their homelands at Christmas or other holiday timesİ for example,
German stollen. My German language teacher bakes Dresdener
stollen, from her childhood, each Christmas and also mails some to
her brother in Germany! His wife doesn't bake and thinks stollenÔ h)0*0*0*°° Ô
contains too many calories, so his sister sees that he gets this
old family favorite annually.
Other families bake specialty breads at holiday or other festival
times. Many Norwegians bake their soft, flat bread called "lefse
or"lefser" for Chrstmas or for local Scandinavian festivals. The
favorite way to serve it in the nothwest is with butter and
cinnamon. One person said that her family made it for all holidays,
and that Grandma started early to make enough for all the guests at
family weddings. Other Scandinavian families bake cardomomİflavored
braided breads for Christmas. A German family I know bakes a
braided, frosted bread they call zopf at Christmas.
The popular German yeast cake, kuchen, might be made whenever
favorite fruits are in season. Another family makes a beef pinwheel
from bread dough, a recipe from a German grandmother.
Polish baba, an Easter yeast cake, is served with its traditional
small lamb molded from sugar paste in the middle of the baba, with
sugar paste eggs all around it.
Russian families may bake kulich, which is traditionally taken to
midnight service at church to be blessed. Yugoslavians may make a
rolled poppyseed bread İpoticaİfor holidays. Other central
European groups will serve the same type of bread on festive
occasions.
For everyday breads, families of both central European and
Scandinavian ancestry rely on commercially baked breads for the
wonderful sourdough ryes, pumpernickel,and crisp brotchen, although
never as crisp as in Germany.
Scandinavian flatbreads that are delightfully crisp are made by
commercial bakers now.
Basque sheepherder bread is still baked in iron Dutch ovens by
Basque cooks, but not everyone follows the customs of slashing a
cross on top or sharing the first piece with one's faithful
sheepdog.
Pancakes and waffles, from European influences, are often made at
home İ but also frequently made from commercial mixes, or frozen
waffles popped into a toaster for quick thawing and crisping.
Most cultural groups which make bread have some kind of pancake.
A very special pancakeİtype bread is the Russian bliny. Bliny are
ritual brads origianlly used in calendar holidays and at family
ceremonies. They were eaten to influence nature and human beings,
says a Russian friend. The ritual use of this bread has pre-Christian origins and was connected with ancient Slavic customs.
The holiday most associated with the serving of bliny is Shrove
Tuesday, a last fling before lent begins. Even though the old
rituals have been forgotten, bliny may still be made on Shrove
Tuesday. They are customarily served with sour cream and caviar.
At Greek Othodox churches in the US, parish women may still make
the altar bread, a special recipe stamped on top with a seal. Each
part of the seal has a special meaning. Greek women also make
other breads for church festivals. These (koulouria and
vasilopita, for example) may be flavored with mastic gum, a
slightly aniseİtasting gum from the mastic shrub. Greek braided
bread, garnished with redİdyed hardİcooked eggs is baked for
Easter. There are rituals about when the eggs should be dyed, and
games involving breaking the eggs are played on Easter morning.
While most Asians traditionally eat bread only as steamed bread or
dumplings, and these are usually purchased readyİ made, there are
a few families who make them at home. Barbecued pork is the
favorite filling.
A family whose father is from the Philippines makes a steamed bun
with pork an egg in the middle. They have these (chipau,
phonetically) at every family getİtogether.
There are several small groups of Ethiopians in the US, and they
like to make their native pancakeİlike flat bread called injera.
Now that the nutritious Ethiopian grain tef is available
commercially in health food stores, some cooks are making injera
from tef.
Excerpts from Bender, Arnold E. 1990. Dictionary of Nutrition and Food Technology. Butterworths, Boston.
Usually refers to a loaf made from wheat or rye flour, but mixtures of many cereals may be used. Wheat flour makes a softer loaf than other cereals, because the gluten is extensible and holds pockets of air. White bread is usually made from flour of 72% extraction rate; the composition depends on the type of flour used. Analysis per 100g whole meal bread (white bread in brackets); water 38g (37g), protein 9g (8g), fat 2.5 g (2g), carbohydrate 42g (49g), dietary fiber 7g (4g), 220 kcal - 0.9MJ (235 kcal - 1 MJ), Fe 3 mg (1.6 mg), Ca 50 mg (100mg), vitamin B1 0.3 mg (0.2mg), vitamin B2 0.1 mg (0.06 mg), niacin 4 mg (1.7 mg). Brown breads are made from flours of varying extraction rates between wholemeal and white flours. Added nutrients are present in, for example, protein bread, wheat germ bread, gluten bread and milk bread.
