THE BATTLE OF THE BREADS

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In THE BATTLE OF THE SOUPS, clam chowder won with tomato soup and 'other' coming next in the poll.

It's now the turn of the breads to do battle! Bread is a staple food for humans in much of the world - Europe, Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, Southern Africa, Australasia, North America, Central America and South America. It's one of the first human-made foods.

Bread can be made unleavened or leavened (usually by adding yeast) and is commonly made from wheat-flour dough, though bread can also be made from barley, maize/corn, millet, rice, rye and sorghum flour. Sourdough bread, popular amidst the covid pandemic, is just bread made from naturally-grown yeast. I always wondered what was special about sourdough, now I know.

Launched by the International Union of Bakers and Confectioners, World Bread Day falls on 16 October each year.

Selecting the poll options was difficult for this poll. There are many different kinds of bread; each country and region invariably has their own speciality bread and even breads.

I'm excluding sweet breads like babka, barmbrack, brioche, croissants, muffins, panettone, pogne de Romans, scones and strucia. This post is only concerned about savoury breads. And I'm excluding crêpes, crumpets, galettes, pancakes, pikelets, Staffordshire oatcakes and waffles because they don't intuitively count as breads to me. 'Flavoured' breads like banana bread, beer bread, carrot bread, cheese bread, chickpea bread, eggy bread (aka French toast), fruit bread/bun, garlic bread, gingerbread, laverbread (a Welsh seaweed bread), monkey bread, olive bread, onion bread, pain au chocolat (aka chocolatine), potato bread and pumpkin bread are also excluded.

There is overlap with the poll options. Bread rolls can be black, brown, white or whatever bread. Sourdough bread can include almost any bread. And I'm not sure about the rustic difference between a cottage loaf, a famer's loaf, pain de campagne, pain de paysan and pan de payés. And rice bread is a gluten-free bread! But you can decide because I can't! With this poll, I've just tried (and maybe failed) to include all the popular breads eaten in America in the hope that 'other' doesn't win!

Of the breads I've eaten, my favourites are baguettes, bread rolls (or cobs as strangely called in Nottingham where I live), brown breads, cottage loaves, croutons (only in a soup), Indian breads (especially chapatis, naans and rotis), multigrain breads, pains de campagne, pitta breads (especially with dips like hummus and tzatziki), seeded breads (particularly poppy-seeded breads), soda breads, tortillas, wheatgerm breads (it's got to be Hovis), white breads (whether a bloomer or a tin loaf) and wholemeal breads.

But my favourite bread is the tiger loaf, a popular Dutch rice bread - see photo below. It's got a great crust; it's fluffily soft inside; and it's perfect freshly cut for a sandwich and for dunking in soup or toasted with lots of butter on.

All breads are good. But my least favourite breads that I've eaten are bagels (too hard), pretzels (too dry) and German rye breads like Pumpernickel bread (too stodgy).

What are your most and least favourite breads?
Have you ever made bread? If so, how did it go?
Do you buy your bread sliced or unsliced, cut or uncut?

I've never made bread. I've made toast though and my speciality is making burnt toast - that's a culinary art! I tend to buy sliced bread because it's easier to toast. But if not toasting, I will always buy fresh uncut bread. The fresher, the better.

Below is a poll where you can anonymously select your most favourite bread. Unfortunately only one pick is allowed in the poll.

But a poll on this site can only have 20 answer options. There was no room for adobe bread, anadama bread, bakarkhani, bammy (a Jamaican flatbread), bannock (a Scottish flatbread), bark bread, barley bread, bazlama, bolani, bolillo, bollo, boule de pain, buckwheat bread, challah, chapati, cottage loaf, damper bread (a popular Australian bread), faluche, fari, farl (an Irish and Scottish flatbread), fougasse, frybread, guokui (a Chinese bread), injera (an Ethiopian bread), kulcha, lavash, limpa bread (a Swedish bread), markook, matera bread, matzah, milk bread (eg shokupan, pain paysan), msemmen (a North African flatbread), multigrain bread, naan, pai bao, pain au son, pain aux noix, pain couronne, pain de mie, pan de Acambaro, pan de Alfacar, pan de payés, pane Toscano, pan gallego, paratha (an Indian bread), plain loaf (a Scottish bread), porridge oat bread, puri (an Indian fried bread), roti, sangak (an Iranian bread), Seele (a German bread), simit (a Turkish bread), sobado bread (aka bregado or candeal bread), soda bread (eg wheaten bread), spelt bread, sprouted bread (eg ezekiel), taboon, telera (aka Mexican bread), wheatgerm bread (eg Hovis) and whole grain bread. Hopefully I've covered all the popular breads as poll options. If 'other' wins, then it's a badly designed poll.

I think white bread will win this poll. But bagel, baguette, bread roll, tortilla and maybe even the dreaded 'other' may figure in the race to win the poll.

I want to thank @EnigmaInitiative for her helpful advice in compiling this poll. Any mistakes with the poll are of course my mistakes unless 'other' wins!

Please see the first comment below to see what has won each battle of the food and drinks so far.

Tiger loaf:

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