When people hear the word "bakery", most of us picture all kinds of baked treats: bread, cookies, pies and more. But did you know the word means more than that?
What Is Bakery?
Put simply, bakery refers to sweets and products made from flour and then baked until cooked. In plain terms, bakery is Western-style confectionery that goes through many steps, including baking, to become a finished treat. There are countless well-known and popular bakery products, from bread and cakes to pies and croissants, and many other sweets can also be called bakery. That is why bakery is famous all over the world.
Bakery has always been popular, both in the past and today, because every country has its own famous baked goods and its own production methods. Some cakes and breads are made with different recipes from country to country, and each recipe depends on the person and their ideas. Today we will look at how many types of bakery products there are.
How Many Types of Bakery Products Are There?
- Bread: the first type is the one everyone already knows. Bread is the most popular bakery product and a staple food in the West, and it can be divided into 4 groups by fat content. Low fat (about 0–3%): French bread, hard rolls, rye bread and other crusty breads. About 4–8% fat: sandwich bread, English bread, whole wheat bread, hamburger buns, hot dog buns and kha kai (Thai "chicken leg" breadsticks). 9–15% fat: filled breads, open-topped breads and yeast doughnuts. High fat (over 15%): sweet breads, and breads with raisins, fruit, coconut or butter.
- Cake: next is a bakery item especially popular with people who have a sweet tooth. Cake is a favourite snack and can be decorated in endless colours and styles, limited only by the baker's imagination, with countless varieties invented by pastry makers. Cakes fall into 3 groups. Sponge cakes are built on 3 main ingredients, eggs, sugar and flour, and rise from air beaten into the eggs; examples include khanom khai (Thai egg cakes), roll cakes and butter sponge cakes. Butter cakes add fat as an extra ingredient, which makes the cake moister. Chiffon cakes adapt the first two styles by separating the yolks and whites, giving a light, fluffy, soft cake.
- Puff pastry: a baked pastry that rises in layers. The layers come from butter sandwiched between sheets of dough; baked at high temperature, steam pressure makes the pastry puff up. The key ingredient for puff pastry is pastry margarine, which has a special property called plasticity that lets it be rolled into thin sheets.
- Danish and croissant: pastries that combine bread with puff pastry. They rise with yeast and have layers of butter inside that create a honeycomb-like structure. They can be made in many shapes and with many different fillings.
In truth, the word bakery covers many more treats than the examples we've given here. Whatever the case, bakery remains a sweet treat that so many people have fallen in love with.
