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.
Baking is a method of preparing food that uses dry heat, typically in an oven, but can also be done in hot ashes, or on hot stones. The most common baked item is bread, but many other types of foods can be baked. Heat is gradually transferred "from the surface of cakes, cookies, and pieces of bread to their center, typically conducted at elevated temperatures surpassing 300°F. Dry heat cooking imparts a distinctive richness to foods through the processes of caramelization and surface browning. As heat travels through, it transforms batters and doughs into baked goods and more with a firm dry crust and a softer center. Baking can be combined with grilling to produce a hybrid barbecue variant by using both methods simultaneously, or one after the other. Baking is related to barbecuing because the concept of the masonry oven is similar to that of a smoke pit.
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.
Amish friendship bread is a type of bread or cake made from a sourdough starter that is often shared in a manner similar to a chain letter. The starter is a substitute for baking yeast and can be used to make many kinds of yeast-based breads, shared with friends, or frozen for future use. The sweet, cake-like Amish cinnamon bread is a common bread that is made from this starter; it is a simple, stirred quick bread that includes a substantial amount of sugar and vegetable oil, with a mild cinnamon flavor. It has characteristics of both pound cake and coffee cake. The flavor of the finished product can be altered by cinnamon being omitted.
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.
A biscuit, in many English-speaking countries, including Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa but not Canada or the US, is a flour-based baked and shaped food item. Biscuits are typically hard, flat, and unleavened. They are usually sweet and may be made with sugar, chocolate, icing, jam, ginger, or cinnamon. They can also be savoury, similar to crackers. Types of biscuit include biscotti, sandwich biscuits, digestive biscuits, ginger biscuits, shortbread biscuits, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate-coated marshmallow treats, Anzac biscuits, and speculaas.
Christmas pudding is sweet, dried-fruit pudding traditionally served as part of Christmas dinner in Britain and other countries to which the tradition has been exported. It has its origins in medieval England, with early recipes making use of dried fruit, suet, breadcrumbs, flour, eggs and spice, along with liquid such as milk or fortified wine. Later, recipes became more elaborate. In 1845, cookery writer Eliza Acton wrote the first recipe for a dish called "Christmas pudding".
Soda bread is a variety of quick bread made in many cuisines in which sodium bicarbonate is used as a leavening agent instead of yeast. The basic ingredients of soda bread are flour, baking soda, salt, and buttermilk. The buttermilk contains lactic acid, which reacts with the baking soda to form bubbles of carbon dioxide. Other ingredients can be added, such as butter, egg, raisins, or nuts. Quick breads can be prepared quickly and reliably, without requiring the time and labor needed for kneaded yeast breads.
Lemon ice box pie is an icebox pie consisting of lemon juice, eggs, and condensed milk in a pie crust, frequently made of graham crackers and butter. It is a variant of key lime pie; in both, the citric acidity sets the egg yolks, with minimal baking. There are also no bake versions.
A teacake in the UK is generally a light yeast-based sweet bun containing dried fruit, typically served toasted and buttered. In the U.S. teacakes can be cookies or small cakes. In Sweden, they are soft, round, flat wheat breads made with milk and a little sugar, and used to make buttered ham or cheese sandwiches. In India and Australia, a teacake is more like a butter cake. Tea refers to the popular beverage to which these baked goods are an accompaniment.
Coffee cake or coffeecake is a sweet bread common in the United States, so called because it is typically served with coffee. Leavenings can include yeast, baking soda, or baking powder. The modern dish typically contains no coffee. Outside the US, the term is generally understood to mean a cake flavored with coffee.
Tapai is a traditional fermented preparation of rice or other starchy foods, and is found throughout much of Southeast Asia, especially in Austronesian cultures, and parts of East Asia. It refers to both the alcoholic paste and the alcoholic beverage derived from it. It has a sweet or sour taste and can be eaten as is, as ingredients for traditional recipes, or fermented further to make rice wine. Tapai is traditionally made with white rice or glutinous rice, but can also be made from a variety of carbohydrate sources, including cassava and potatoes. Fermentation is performed by a variety of moulds including Aspergillus oryzae, Rhizopus oryzae, Amylomyces rouxii or Mucor species, and yeasts including Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and Saccharomycopsis fibuliger, Endomycopsis burtonii and others, along with bacteria.
Turnip cake is a Chinese dim sum dish. The less common name radish cake is more accurate, as Western-style turnips are not used in the dish but rather shredded radish and plain rice flour. It is traditionally called carrot cake in Singapore.
A tea loaf or tea bread is an English bread, made with dried fruit and traditionally served sliced and spread with butter. It is seen as a very traditional cake and the tea loaf is available in cafes and other establishments that serve traditional afternoon tea. It is particularly associated with Yorkshire.
In the United States, a biscuit is a variety of baked bread with a firm, dry exterior and a soft, crumbly interior. In Canada it sometimes also refers to this or a traditional European biscuit. 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 eggs, 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.
Huangjiu is a type of Chinese rice wine (mijiu) most popular in the Jiangnan area. Huangjiu is brewed by mixing steamed grains including rice, glutinous rice or millet with qū as starter culture, followed by saccharification and fermentation at around 13–18 °C (55–64 °F) for fortnights. Its alcohol content is typically 8% to 20%.
Sabahan cuisine is a regional cuisine of Malaysia. As in the rest of Malaysian cuisine, Sabah food is based on staples such as rice with a great variety of other ingredients and different methods of food preparations due to the influence of the state's varied geography and indigenous cultures that were quite distinct from the regional cuisines of the Peninsular Malaysia. Sabah along with its neighbour of Sarawak is famous for their multi-ethnic population.
