Pizza is an Italian dish typically consisting of a flat base of leavened wheat-based dough topped with tomato, cheese, and other ingredients, baked at a high temperature, traditionally in a wood-fired oven.
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.
Shortcrust is a type of pastry often used for the base of a tart, quiche, pie, or flan. Shortcrust pastry can be used to make both sweet and savory pies such as apple pie, quiche, lemon meringue or chicken pie.
Pastry refers to a variety of doughs, as well as the sweet and savoury baked goods made from them. These goods are often called pastries as a synecdoche, and the dough may be accordingly called pastry dough for clarity. Sweetened pastries are often described as bakers' confectionery. Common pastry dishes include pies, tarts, quiches, croissants, and pasties.
A croissant is a French pastry in a crescent shape made from a laminated yeast dough similar to puff pastry.
Sourdough or sourdough bread is a bread made by allowing the dough to ferment using naturally occurring lactobacillaceae and yeast before baking. The fermentation process produces lactic acid, which gives the bread a sour taste and improves its keeping-qualities.
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 flavourings.
Baking blind is the process of baking a pie crust or other pastry without the filling. Blind baking a pie crust is necessary when it will be filled with an unbaked filling, in which case the crust must be fully baked. It is also called for if the filling has a shorter bake time than the crust, in which case the crust is partly baked. Blind baking is also used to keep pie crust from becoming soggy due to a wet filling.
In baking, a crust is the outer, hard skin of bread or the shell of a pie. Generally, it is made up of at least shortening or another fat, water, flour, and salt. It may also include milk, sugar, or other ingredients that contribute to the taste or texture. An egg or milk wash can be used to decorate the outside, as well as coarse sugar. A crust contributes to a pastry.
A bread making machine or breadmaker or Bread Maker 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.
A hamantash is an Ashkenazi Jewish triangular filled-pocket pastry associated with the Jewish holiday of Purim. The name refers to Haman, the villain in the Purim story. In Hebrew, hamantashen are also known as אוזני המן, meaning "Haman's ears". "Haman's ears" also refers to a Sephardic Purim pastry, "Orejas de Haman", thought to originate in Spain and Italy, that is made by frying twisted or rolled strips of dough.
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.
In cooking, kneading is a process in the making of bread or dough, used to mix the ingredients and add strength to the final product. It allows the process of baking to be shortened by developing the gluten more quickly than it would develop in the absence of kneading.
A loaf is a (usually) rounded or oblong quantity 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.
Beer bread is any bread that includes beer in the dough mixture. Depending on the type of beer used, it may or may not contribute leavening to the baking process. Thus, beer breads range from heavy, unleavened, loaves to light breads and rolls incorporating baker's yeast. The flavor of beer bread is sometimes enhanced with other flavors, such as cheese or herbs.
In cooking, proofing is a step in the preparation of yeast bread and other baked goods in which the dough is allowed to rest and rise a final time before baking. During this rest period, yeast ferments the dough and produces gases, thereby leavening the dough.
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.
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.
Peter Reinhart is an American baker, educator and author. He is most known for writing Bread Revolution, American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza, The Joy of Gluten-Free, Sugar-Free Baking and The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. Four of his books have been nominated for James Beard Awards, with three of them winning, including the "Book of the Year" in 2002 for The Bread Baker's Apprentice.
