Breaking Bread

Arepas are flat, round, cornmeal patties. They are baked, fried or cooked on a charcoal grill, and filled with grated cheese, ham and black beans. Arepas are made from precooked corn flour (gluten-free), water and a pinch of salt.

Originated from southern Germany, the Jewish bagel truly became its own in Polish shtetls. Shtetl were small Jewish towns in Poland and Russia. the bagel was inspired by the Pretzel brought to Poland by German and Jewish migration in the 14th century. Originally sold on the streets by vendors in baskets or on a stick, the shape symbolizes eternal life for the Jewish community. With mass migration of Jews to America, many people earned a living by selling bagels on the street.

Chapati is a South Asian flat bread made with wheat flour. It is not baked but toasted over a griddle, till they are freckled gold. it can be eaten with lentil soup or vegetable dishes like Indian curry.

An English muffin is a small, round, flat type of yeast-leavened bread which is usually sliced horizontally and toasted.

Focaccia is a flat oven-baked Italian bread made of (high-gluten) flour, oil, water, salt and yeast. Focaccia is often sprinkled with additional salt or topped with other salty ingredients such as olives and rosemary.

Grissini are pencil-sized sticks of crisp, dry bread originating in Italy. they are crisp all the way through and are often flavored with various herbs, seeds, and spices.

Injera is a sourdough like flatbread with a unique, slightly spongy texture. Traditionally, injera is made out of teff, a grain native to the highlands of Ethiopia, and is a central part of Ethiopian dining. In Ethiopian cuisine, injera is put between the fingers and used to pick up or scoop food off the plate. Traditionally, Ethiopian food is served on a large injera.

Knäckebröd is a Swedish flat and dry type of bread or cracker, containing mostly rye flour. Many kinds of knäckebröd contain wheat flour, spices, and grains. It is fibre-rich and traditionally served with cheese and herring.

Lavash is a thin flatbread of Armenian origin made with flour, water, and salt. It is popular in the Caucasus, Iran and Turkey. Traditionally cooked in a tandoori oven, it is low in fat. toasted sesame seeds and/or poppy seeds are sometimes sprinkled on before baking.

Matzo is an unleavened large cracker, traditionally eaten by Jews during Passover holiday. The flour may be made from the five grains mentioned in the Torah: wheat, barley, spelt, rye and oats.

A small light and fluffy Chinese bun, bao are steamed in bamboo steamer baskets atop boiling water. Baos are rolled out flat when prepared, before they are filled with a number of delicious fillings, like seafood and vegetables. They are then folded and crimped at the top before steaming.

An iconic, long, thin, white French bread. Baguettes feature a thick, crisp crust encasing a chewy, light interior. Baguettes may have small or large air pockets, thus changing the lightness of the bread. in France, the recipe for baguettes is regulated by law, however, no such legislation exists regarding its arguably more iconic shape.

Fry bread is a traditional First Nations bread. the long-held origin story is that it was created by the navajo people of Arizona as they were forced from their traditional land to Bosque Redondo, New Mexico. The rations of flour and lard given to them were combined with baking powder and used to fry a simple dough, creating frybread. the baking powder acts as a leavening agent and makes it quick to make. the small, slightly puffy discs are often eaten folded over and stuffed with fillings like meat, or covered with spreads like honey and jam.

South Asian flatbread leavened with yeast, this light and fluffy bread is traditionally cooked in a tandoor oven, a large, cone-shaped oven with a thick walls and small opening at the top. to make naan, dough is slapped onto the side from the top of the oven to quickly bake the bread. When finished, hot naan loaves are removed with a metal spike.

Pre-settler Bannock style buns were made from camas bulb, and were baked for long periods of time, dried and flattened, and formed into cakes and loaves. Today it is mainly made with oat or barley, and the Canadian variety of Bannock traditionally uses white flour.

A simple everyday flatbread eaten commonly in Algeria, kesra is an unleavened flatbread made with water, oil, flour, and salt. It is cooked either on a griddle or in a round pan and is eaten as an accompaniment to many different meals.

Pan de Muerto, or “bread of the dead”, is a special bread that is offered and eaten during Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico. the bread is a yeast leavened bread cooked in a traditional bread oven. it is usually enriched with eggs and is slightly sweet. Pan de Muerto is formed into many shapes, such as skulls and animals.

Qistibi is a popular traditional bread in the mountainous, Muslim-majority regions of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan in Russia. A baked, unleavened flatbread that is usually made into a hot pocket or dumpling-like dish, qistibi is frequently filled with mashed potato but can also be meat sauce or millet. The fillings are are placed on one half of the flat cake and the other half is folded over to cover the filling.

A tortilla is a type of soft, thin flatbread made not from maize meal and/or wheat flour. they are used to prepare many Mexican dishes like tacos, enchiladas, burritos, and wraps. tortilla chips are deep-fried pieces of tortilla, often with added salt and other flavourings.

Beer and bread both share the same basic ingredients and fermenting principles. Beer is essentially gluten in an alternate form, both beer and bread rely on a delicate fermentation process, and beer’s flavouring can also widely vary based on the ingredients used.

In fact, archaeological evidence suggests that beer and bread were often made alongside one another as early as 3000 BCE.

Throughout history, bakers would obtain fermenting agents for bread from the leftover sediments that come from brewing beer. Up until the 19th century, all bakers would get their yeast from breweries.

Across Africa, bread has long been a dietary staple. Starting in the eighth century, Arab traders crossing the Sahara Desert observed bread made of tubers and millet being baked in large, underground brick-lined ovens called earth depressions.

Earth depressions are able to stay hot for days as the brick lining retains heat very well. Across the rest of the continent, bread is baked, steamed, or fried using different forms of ovens and griddles over an open fire.

In the West, leavened bread is the norm. In the early modern era, many European health guides labelled flatbread as unhealthy, thus creating a stigma due to perceived inferiority.

European taste was made the culinary standard. Europeans equated refined food, such as bread made with bleached white flour, with sophistication.

European flatbreads, such as Scottish oatcake, were regarded as “lesser” and low-quality.

As upper classes often followed these rules closely, leavened breads were reinforced as being culinarily and culturally superior and flatbreads were kept as a low-quality food for the poor.