![]() Barm cake with melted butter and black pudding | |
Type | Bread |
---|---|
Place of origin | England |
Region or state | Historical Lancashire |
Main ingredients | Barm |
A barm cake[ citation needed ] is a soft, round, flattish bread roll from North West England, traditionally leavened with barm. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Bacon is often the filling for a barm cake, at home or in Lancashire cafes or bakers. [5]
Chips are also a popular filling, sold in most fish and chip shops in the North West of England and often called a chip barm. Another popular filling in the North West, particularly Bolton, is a pasty barm. [6] [7] In Wigan, a whole savoury pie is served in a barm cake, traditionally known locally as a Pie Barm or Slappy, and more recently as a "Wigan Kebab". [8] [9]
Bread is a staple food prepared from a dough of flour and water, usually by baking. Throughout recorded history and around the world, it has been an important part of many cultures' diet. It is one of the oldest human-made foods, having been of significance since the dawn of agriculture, and plays an essential role in both religious rituals and secular culture.
Cake is a flour confection made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients and is usually baked. In their oldest forms, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elaborate and which share features with desserts such as pastries, meringues, custards, and pies.
Sourdough or sourdough bread is a bread made by the fermentation of dough using wild lactobacillaceae and yeast. Lactic acid from fermentation imparts a sour taste and improves keeping qualities.
Baking powder is a dry chemical leavening agent, a mixture of a carbonate or bicarbonate and a weak acid. The base and acid are prevented from reacting prematurely by the inclusion of a buffer such as cornstarch. Baking powder is used to increase the volume and lighten the texture of baked goods. It works by releasing carbon dioxide gas into a batter or dough through an acid–base reaction, causing bubbles in the wet mixture to expand and thus leavening the mixture. The first single-acting baking powder was developed by food manufacturer Alfred Bird in England in 1843. The first double-acting baking powder, which releases some carbon dioxide when dampened and later releases more of the gas when heated by baking, was developed by Eben Norton Horsford in the U.S. in the 1860s.
Baker's yeast is the common name for the strains of yeast commonly used in baking bread and other bakery products, serving as a leavening agent which causes the bread to rise by converting the fermentable sugars present in the dough into carbon dioxide and ethanol. Baker's yeast is of the species Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and is the same species as the kind commonly used in alcoholic fermentation, which is called brewer's yeast or the deactivated form nutritional yeast. Baker's yeast is also a single-cell microorganism found on and around the human body.
In cooking, a leavening agent or raising agent, also called a leaven or leavener, is any one of a number of substances used in doughs and batters that cause a foaming action that lightens and softens the mixture. An alternative or supplement to leavening agents is mechanical action by which air is incorporated. Leavening agents can be biological or synthetic chemical compounds. The gas produced is often carbon dioxide, or occasionally hydrogen.
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.
Dough is a thick, malleable, sometimes elastic paste made from grains or from leguminous or chestnut crops. Dough is typically made by mixing flour with a small amount of water or other liquid and sometimes includes yeast or other leavening agents, as well as ingredients such as fats or flavorings.
Quick bread is any bread leavened with a chemical leavening agent rather than a biological one like yeast or sourdough starter. An advantage of quick breads is their ability to be prepared quickly and reliably, without requiring the time-consuming skilled labor and the climate control needed for traditional yeast breads.
Vienna bread is a type of bread that is produced from a process developed in Vienna, Austria, in the 19th century. The Vienna process used high milling of Hungarian grain, and cereal press-yeast for leavening.
Desem is both a type of sourdough starter made from whole wheat flour, spelt flour or other flours and water, and the resulting bread.
Barm, also called ale yeast, is the foam or scum formed on the top of a fermenting liquid, such as beer, wine, or feedstock for spirits or industrial ethanol distillation. It is used to leaven bread, or set up fermentation in a new batch of liquor. Barm, as a leaven, has also been made from ground millet combined with must out of wine-tubs and is sometimes used in English baking as a synonym for a natural leaven (sourdough). Various cultures derived from barm, usually Saccharomyces cerevisiae, became ancestral to most forms of brewer's yeast and baker's yeast currently on the market.
Bread is a staple food of Finland. It is served with almost every meal and many different types are produced domestically.
Boule, from French, meaning "ball", is a traditional shape of French bread resembling a squashed ball. A boule can be made using any type of flour and can be leavened with commercial yeast, chemical leavening, or even wild yeast (sourdough). The name of this rustic loaf shape is the reason the French call bread bakers "boulangers" and bread bakeries "boulangeries".
In the United States and Canada, a biscuit is a variety of baked bread with a firm, dry exterior and a soft, crumbly interior. It is made with baking powder as a leavening agent rather than yeast, and at times is called a baking powder biscuit to differentiate it from other types. Like other forms of bread, a biscuit is often served with butter or other condiments, flavored with other ingredients, or combined with other types of food to make sandwiches or other dishes.
Sponge cake is a light cake made with egg whites, flour and sugar, sometimes leavened with baking powder. Some sponge cakes do not contain egg yolks, like angel food cake, but most of them do. Sponge cakes, leavened with beaten eggs, originated during the Renaissance, possibly in Spain. The sponge cake is thought to be one of the first non-yeasted cakes, and the earliest attested sponge cake recipe in English is found in a book by the English poet Gervase Markham, The English Huswife, Containing the Inward and Outward Virtues Which Ought to Be in a Complete Woman (1615). Still, the cake was much more like a cracker: thin and crispy. Sponge cakes became the cake recognised today when bakers started using beaten eggs as a rising agent in the mid-18th century. The Victorian creation of baking powder by English food manufacturer Alfred Bird in 1843 allowed the addition of butter to the traditional sponge recipe, resulting in the creation of the Victoria sponge. Cakes are available in many flavours and have many recipes as well. Sponge cakes have become snack cakes via the Twinkie.
Baking was a popular profession and source of food in ancient Rome. Many ancient Roman baking techniques were developed due to Greek bakers who traveled to Rome following the Third Macedonian War. Ancient Roman bakers could make large quantities of money. This may have contributed to receiving a negative reputation. Bakers used tools such as the fornax, testum, thermospodium, and the clibanus to make bread. Most Roman breads were made using sourdough. The most common way to leaven bread was using flour mixed with grain.
...the original method of making yeast bread in Britain was a by-product of ale-making. When traditional ale is made, a yeasty froth appears on top of the fermenting liquid, the wort. This used to be scooped off, washed and added to bread dough in order to leaven it. Bread made this way is sweeter tasting than sourdough, and the leavening yeast used to be called 'barm'. Its unpredictability created the word 'barmy'. In the 19th century, the process was refined and industrialized, manufacturing it on a large scale with what is known today as 'baker's yeast', and used worldwide as the primary method of leavening bread. The barm method appears to be an ancient method developed by Gaelic peoples, and was quite different from that used in Europe, which is to leaven bread with a sourdough or leaven (the French call a similar product 'levain'). When the Romans first conquered Gaul, modern day France, they were astonished by the light sweet bread made by the Celtic inhabitants. Barm bread survived with the Celtic peoples in Britain, Scotland and Ireland, but was not common in Europe, being condemned during the Enlightenment as 'unwholesome'. In England, noblemen's bread, manchet, was always made with the barm method, whereas the commoners' bread, maslin, was a sourdough. Barm bread survived until World War Two, and even later in the North of England, largely as barm cakes. Curiously, the old method of making a sponge, or thick batter of flour and water with the barm was still used with the new industrially produced yeast and was re-introduced to Europe from Vienna where the first yeast factories were established. This became popular in France as a 'poolish', the favoured method of making crusty bread such as a baguette.