Lammas, also known as Loaf Mass Day, is a Christian holiday celebrated in some English-speaking countries in the Northern Hemisphere on 1 August. The name originates from the word "loaf" in reference to bread and "Mass" in reference to the Eucharist. It is a festival in the liturgical calendar to mark the blessing of the First Fruits of harvest, with a loaf of bread being brought to the church for this purpose. Lammastide falls at the halfway point between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox. Christians also have church processions to bakeries, where those working therein are blessed by Christian clergy.
Pita or pitta is a family of yeast-leavened round flatbreads baked from wheat flour, common in the Mediterranean, Levant, and neighboring areas. It includes the widely known version with an interior pocket, also known as Arabic bread. In the United Kingdom, Greek bread is used for pocket versions such as the Greek pita, and are used for barbecues as a souvlaki wrap. The Western name pita may sometimes be used to refer to various other types of flatbreads that have different names in their local languages, such as numerous styles of Arab khubz (bread).
Sliced bread is a loaf of bread that has been sliced with a machine and packaged for convenience, as opposed to the consumer cutting it with a knife. It was first sold in 1928, advertised as "the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped". By 1933, around 80% of bread sold in the US was pre-sliced, leading to the popular idiom "greatest thing since sliced bread".
A baguette is a long, thin type of bread of French origin that is commonly made from basic lean dough. It is distinguishable by its length and crisp crust.
Brioche is a bread of French origin whose high egg and butter content gives it a rich and tender crumb. The chef Joël Robuchon described it as "light and slightly puffy, more or less fine, according to the proportion of butter and eggs". It has a dark, golden, and flaky crust, frequently accentuated by an egg wash applied after proofing.
A sugarloaf was the usual form in which refined sugar was produced and sold until the late 19th century, when granulated and cube sugars were introduced. A tall cone with a rounded top was the end product of a process in which dark molasses, a rich raw sugar that was imported from sugar-growing regions such as the Caribbean and Brazil, was refined into white sugar.
Challah is a special bread of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, usually braided and typically eaten on ceremonial occasions such as Shabbat and major Jewish holidays. Ritually acceptable challah is made of dough from which a small portion has been set aside as an offering. Challah may also refer to the dough offering. The word is biblical in origin, meaning "loaf". Similar braided breads such as kalach and vánočka are found across Central and Eastern Europe.
A bread making machine or breadmaker is a home appliance for baking bread. It consists of a bread pan, at the bottom of which are one or more built-in paddles, mounted in the center of a small special-purpose oven. The machine is usually controlled by a built-in computer using settings input via a control panel. Most bread machines have different cycles for different kinds of dough—including white bread, whole grain, European-style, and dough-only. Many also have a timer to allow the bread machine to function without operator input, and some high-end models allow the user to program a custom cycle.
An artos is a loaf of leavened bread that is blessed during services in the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine rite catholic churches. A large Artos is baked with a seal depicting the resurrection for use at Pascha (Easter). Smaller loaves are blessed during great vespers in a ritual called Artoklasia and in other occasions like feast days, weddings, memorial services etc.
A stottie cake or stotty is a type of bread that originated in North East England. It is a flat and round loaf, usually about 30 centimetres in diameter and 4 centimetres deep, with an indent in the middle produced by the baker. Elsewhere in the world, bread considered similar to the stottie is known as "oven bottom bread", though this term is a relative newcomer, given that, prior to the widespread use of cast iron ovens with shelves, ovens were built of brick and had only the bottom available to bake on. One chief characteristic is the heavy and dough-like texture of the bread. Though leavened, its taste and mouth-feel is heavy and very reminiscent of dough. It is heavy and dense because it has only been allowed to prove once rather than the usual twice. This indicates that its origins lie in the breads used to "test" ovens, and that it may be related to similar breads baked elsewhere in Europe for the same reason. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that some stotties were made with the offcuts of dough when all of the required loaves had been baked.
A prosphoron is a small loaf of leavened bread used in Orthodox Christian and Greek Catholic (Byzantine) liturgies. The plural form is prosphora (πρόσφορα). The term originally meant any offering made to a temple, but in Orthodox Christianity and Byzantine Rite Catholicism it has come to mean specifically the bread offered at the Divine Liturgy (Eucharist).
Bunny chow, often referred to simply as a bunny, is an Indian South African fast food dish consisting of a hollowed-out loaf of white bread filled with curry and a serving of salad on the side. It originated among Indian South Africans of Durban. Throughout various South African communities one can find cultural adaptations to the original version of the bunny chow, which uses only a quarter loaf of bread and is sometimes called a skhambane,kota ("quarter") or shibobo, a name it shares with sphatlho, a South African dish that evolved from the bunny chow.
A loaf is a (usually) rounded or oblong mass of food, typically and originally of bread. It is common to bake bread in a rectangular bread pan or loaf pan because some kinds of bread dough tend to collapse and spread out during the cooking process if not constrained; the shape of less viscous doughs can be maintained with a bread pan whose sides are higher than the uncooked dough. More viscous doughs can be hand-molded into the desired loaf shape and cooked on a flat oven tray.
The Pullman loaf, sometimes called the "sandwich loaf" or "pan bread", is a rectangular loaf of white bread baked in a long, narrow, lidded pan. The French term for this style of loaf is pain de mie, or, less commonly, pain anglais.
Kulcha is a Persian term for a disc-shaped loaf of leavened bread. In India, this term is commonly used for regular English bread.
Cardamom breads, including the Finnish pulla and Swedish kardemummabröd and kardemummabullar, are a group of enriched breads or pastry flavored with cardamom. They are eaten throughout the year, typically with coffee or tea.
The pane ticinese is a white bread traditionally made in the Swiss canton of Ticino, but also available in the rest of Switzerland, where it is known as "Bread of Ticino". In Ticino, it is referred to by a number of names specific to the region, including pane riga, reale or lireta.
Bread is a staple food throughout Europe. Throughout the 20th century, there was a huge increase in global production, mainly due to a rise in available, developed land throughout Europe, North America and Africa.
Bread has a significance beyond mere nutrition in many cultures in the Western world and Asia because of its history and contemporary importance. Bread is also significant in Christianity as one of the elements of the Eucharist; see sacramental bread. The word companion comes from Latin com- "with" + panis "bread".
