Carb lovers like us have surely seen, heard of and tasted all kinds of delicious bread. Every type of international restaurant serves its own bread basket. Today we take a look at some of the world's most popular breads.
1. Tortilla
When people think of Mexican food, many think of this bread. The tortilla is a type of flatbread, but thinner, because it contains no raising agent at all. There are two main types: corn tortillas, made from finely ground corn, and flour tortillas, made from wheat flour. Tortillas are used to wrap food, such as tacos, where meat and vegetables are placed on a small tortilla, and burritos, where a large tortilla is rolled around meat and mashed beans. Corn tortillas are also fried until crisp and cut into small triangles called tortilla chips, eaten as a snack with salsa (a chopped tomato dip seasoned with lime juice) or guacamole (seasoned mashed avocado), or used in snacks such as nachos.
2. Pita
Pita bread is often seen in Middle Eastern restaurants, such as Turkish and Lebanese, and around the Mediterranean, especially in Greek restaurants. Pita belongs to the flatbread family: it is round and rises only slightly. Its signature feature is the pocket in the middle, created by baking at a high temperature, which makes the dough puff up quickly; as it cools and flattens, a pocket forms. It can be stuffed with fillings, made into a sandwich or eaten alongside meat or sauces. Greek restaurants often serve pita with dips such as hummus (mashed chickpeas) and baba ganoush (mashed aubergine) as a starter.
3. Bagel
A bagel is not a doughnut, though it is round with a hole in the middle like one. Although bagels are hugely popular in America, they actually originated in Jewish communities in Poland and were spread to other countries by Jewish communities as well. The bagel's signature is its dense, rather chewy crumb, the result of boiling the bagel before baking. This forms an outer crust that stops the bread from puffing up while it bakes. Bagels are usually sliced horizontally and eaten as sandwiches, and the most popular filling is lox, cured salmon, with cream cheese.
4. Sourdough
Sourdough has only become a hit in Thailand in the past few years, but it is actually bread made the ancient way, from before dried yeast or baking powder existed. Many people know sourdough as an artisan bread or a healthy bread, because it is made with a starter: naturally occurring microorganisms and yeasts cultivated through fermentation, which make the bread rise. Its signatures are an irregular open crumb, a slightly sour flavour and an aroma unique to each baker, since each starter is fed differently. Sourdough can be made from white wheat flour, wholemeal flour or rye flour; rye is usually baked with a sourdough starter because regular yeast cannot make it rise as well.
5. Focaccia
Many people love this soft, fragrant bread, often served in a basket before the meal at Italian restaurants. It is softer and moister than ciabatta and fragrant with olive oil, often with extra flavourings such as black olives, onion, cheese, sun-dried tomatoes or herbs like rosemary. Focaccia's signature look is a flat bread with dimples on top that hold the olive oil drizzled over it before baking.
6. Ciabatta
You could call it Italy's baguette. Ciabatta was created to compete with the baguette: at a time when French bread sandwiches were booming in Italy, local bakers could stand it no longer and created a bread from the same main ingredients, wheat flour, water, yeast and salt, to give Italians their own choice for sandwiches. It is a flatter, wider rectangle that its inventor thought looked like his wife's slipper, hence the name ciabatta, Italian for "slipper". Ciabatta's crumb is moister and softer than a baguette's.
7. Croissant
The croissant takes its name from its crescent shape ("croissant" means crescent in French) and is another popular bread from France. Its texture differs from other breads because it is made of many thin layers of dough stacked with layers of butter between them, keeping each layer separate and making the pastry fragrant and rich. A good croissant has a crisp, golden-brown exterior that shatters into flakes when you tear it (a French friend once told us a good croissant should leave you covered in crumbs). Inside are air pockets of all sizes between the layers, with a light texture and rich buttery aroma. It is lovely with coffee for breakfast or with afternoon tea. Another common version is filled with chocolate, rolled into a cylinder instead of a crescent, and called pain au chocolat.
So, how about these popular breads? Just reading about them makes you hungry, right?
