That's a sourdough bread, right? Now, there's a rabbit hole to dive into. It uses a different type of levain / yeast culture compared to bread based on dried yeast.

Long story short, sourdough was / is how bread was made throughout history. Fermentation takes a very long time due to the nature of the levain. At some point, bakers noticed how the leftovers from brewers yeasts drastically shorten fermentation. That and industrialization led to modern day bread you find in the supermarket.

Jon from Proof Bread on YT does a much better job at explaining. [1]

Another great watch is Michael Pollan's "Cooked" series. In the 3rd episode, he explores bread, it's history and makes the case about modern industrialization affecting the quality and the nutritional value of modern bread. [2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-0p0p0zqVE [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epMAq5WYJk4

> That's a sourdough bread, right?

Yes, the one I linked is made out of sourdough, which is a sign of quality here. Though, we do also have the same style of bread without sourdough.

There is “artisan” bread, made by hand, which is the round kind. Then there is “sandwich bread”, which is the rectangular kind.

Ingredients: Artisan bread is usually just flour, water, salt, yeast (sourdough is just flour and water, too). Sandwich bread can include milk or other fats to make it softer and is more of a “cake”. In industrial settings, there are a lot of preservatives included in the sandwich bread.

Mixing: Artisan bread is mixed by hand. Sandwich bread is mixed in a mixer. The former thus has less worked gluten.

Shaping: Artisan bread is made into a ball (similar to “spinning” pizza dough). Sandwich bread is poured into a tin and requires no shaping.

Bake: Artisan bread is baked at high heat, around 500F, in steam. Sandwich bread is baked in a specific tin at lower heat, like a cake.

As you can see, the sandwich bread is easily scalable and, being essentially a cake, is preferred by many. A loaf of sandwich bread is around $1-$2 where an artisan bread is like 4x more.

Also, there are flours, like rye, which have to be made with sandwich-type methods. These flours don’t have enough gluten to hold shape on their own.

> Sandwich bread is poured into a tin and requires no shaping. > being essentially a cake

I don't think either of those are true - at least not an any bakery I've ever been to.

Cakes are a very specific type of baked good, made with a batter not a dough, which do not use yeast for leavening. Cakes also do not rely on gluten, and in fact limit it's formation by utilizing low protein flour.

Also, bread dough will never 'pour' unless you've gone horribly wrong.

Tin is normal (and also the reason the loaf is rectangular with a mushroom top rather than round): https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/classic-sandwich-br...

For batter vs. dough: yes, they are not the same, but adding any fat to dough inhibits glutten (e.g., https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/36267/how-does-f...), which is why sandwich bread is soft and spongy. It may not pour, but neither does muffin batter or brownies, for example. My point is there is a whole spectrum for gluten formation.

Compare the cake recipe https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/classic-birthday-ca... to the bread recipe above. The main difference is that butter is added along with eggs, and the leavening is different. Artisan bread only has the 4 ingredients, sandwich bread adds sugar, milk, and oil, and cake changes leavening and adds eggs/butter. As you go up the spectrum, you are intentionally avoiding strong gluten development, resulting in smaller holes and softer texture. See challah bread for another data point of bread with eggs+oil https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/classic-challah-rec.... You can also make the gluten weak by using something like 100% rye, which has to be baked in the same tin (though that would have a harder crust).

I have made that exact King Arthur sandwich bread recipe and it doesn't do anything like "pour". Loaf pans are used for sandwich bread to get more lift and a more sandwich-friendly shape, but there is far more gluten development than any cake batter. You can use that same recipe to make rolls, for instance, and they bake up just fine.

The cake recipe has a 2:3 ratio of flour to sugar, while the bread recipe has a 14:1 ratio. It also has a 2:1 ratio of flour to fat, with the bread being 6:1. The cake also has a much higher hydration ratio, more milk, eggs, and a completely different mixing process.

Really not "essentially" the same thing at all.

> Mixing: Artisan bread is mixed by hand.

Do you really mean mixing, or rather kneading?

Kneading bread is very hard work; occasionally I do it for a single loaf, but it really doesn't scale above 1 or 2 loaves. Even artisinal bakeries have machines for it.

Started baking bread with kids recently. They love it. But next day the leftover bread is stale. I explained that it isn’t full of preservatives.

After a moment, they look at me and ask where we can get some.

This is one of the funniest things when introducing people to some of the ingredients and methods used in commercial food production -- stuff like Xanthan gum as a thickener, soy lechtin as an emulsifier, or calcium propanate as a preservative. Once people know what they do and how it works they stop being "scary chemicals" corporations are putting in our food. I think it's a branding issue, sodium bicarbonate is a scary chemical but baking soda is a household ingredient, MSG is super scary but seaweed salt sounds delicious.

There are tactics other than preservatives to make bread last, such as covering it, freezing it, and tangzhong: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2018/03/26/introductio...

I tend to bake two loaves (always with tangzhong if the particular recipe can tolerate it), wrap both, immediately freeze one, and the other one lasts somewhere short of a week.

You definitely need to slice and freeze it! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31015602

No preservatives necessary. You just need a freezer and a toaster.

Adds inconvenience though when a kid just wants a pb&j right this moment. But yes, freezing is the way.

If you make artisan bread with sourdough, it can easily last 3-4 days. Mine don’t grow mold until 7-9 days.

It shouldn’t go stale in a day if you keep it somewhere somewhat airtight.

If you keep it airtight, the crust will dampen from the moisture that comes from the inside.

Which storing bread that has a crust worth preserving, I tend to make sure it gets a little air (covering it with linen cloths, for example), and accept the small amount of drying out that comes with this form of storage.

> Also, there are flours, like rye, which have to be made with sandwich-type methods. These flours don’t have enough gluten to hold shape on their own.

The bread parent linked (and most German breads for that matter) is a rye bread!

I think if you have an active starter, it can be pretty much as quick as bakers yeast. The slow fermentation is just to give it more flavor.

I think the benefits of bakers yeast are reliability and predictability.

I would happily eat sourdough over any other kind of bread.

FWIW in the US this is called "artisan bread", as opposed to supermarket bread. You can get it in bakeries in every major city, and at farmer's markets, but not most supermarkets, especially not outside the city. It's really popular in San Francisco for example.

I found this out because I brought some bread from back to the suburbs to my parents, and they thought it was awesome, and had never had it before ... ! I haven't lived in the suburbs for ~20 years so I forgot that the availability of food is different.

> but not most supermarkets, especially not outside the city.

Not sure what part of the country you live in, but this kind of bread is available at even the smallest out-of-the-way grocery store anywhere in California, and on most of the west coast that I've been to. I know because my family is hooked on it...

It's probably more available in California, but I'd also say that there's a lot of bread of that shape that isn't "artisan bread".

If it's baked by a local, skilled person (an artiasan!) and delivered early in the morning, I'd call that artisan bread.

But I think a lot of supermarket bread is basically baked in a big facility mostly by machines. I don't know the details but I think they have to make the ingredients more homogeneous for this to work. And if it's not delivered the same day, they will need to put preservatives in it.

IMO the difference is like night and day. My dad is the kind of person who swears by everything Costco, but even he likes the fresh artisan bread.

Keep in mind, this service appears to be focused on India, where the kind of loaf bread pictured is also not the most traditional. (When I lived in Afghanistan and would occasionally buy loaves of sandwich bread at groceries catering to expats, my Indian colleagues referred to it as "double roti"—a term I found delightful. I wonder how common that usage is in India these days.)

> this service appears to be focused on India, where the kind of loaf bread pictured is also not the most traditional.

While that's technically true, when we use the word "bread" we generally mean this (Western?) kind of bread. For the Indian kinds of bread we normally use roti. In everyday contexts, if someone says bread, it almost always refers to the kind of bread pictured there.

I don't think it's fair to accuse all the West of preferring this type of bread.

It's British or American, depending how much sugar was added.

My favourite bread is Wonder Bread, fight me

Indian cuisine also has a pretty wide selection of different "breads" (dough patties? DeepL does not even know a word for "Teigfladen" (de)). Naan and Roti are probably the most known, but there are several others including very fatty ones.

(somebody from India please chime in, I don't know the names :-) )

(Not from India but had an Indian roommate once and attended his wedding in India thereafter (obviously :-))

- 20 different types of roti to try out if you thought all Indian breads are the same: https://www.innfinity.in/food/types-of-roti/

- 15 Best Indian Bread Recipes: https://food.ndtv.com/lists/10-best-indian-bread-recipes-146...

Having eaten bread many places in Germany over the years, I certainly is aware of the shape of bread you show, but I've also had plenty of loaves of bread similar to the image in the linked site in Germany.

Well, we Germans are known for our baked goods and at a bakery you will find a wide variety including French croissants, baguette or Italian ciabatta. But at least in Bavaria "bread" is the one I linked and you refer to everything else by name. Whole grain bread usually comes in that form and of course toast. It's just not what comes to my mind especially in the context of a loaf.

I'm not German but from CEE but I also do not consider 'sandwich bread' as 'bread' or at least not as default option for 'bread'.

Differences in expectations around baked goods found its way into the episode of the 90's show, "The Tick" in "The Tick vs. Europe"

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0723382/

I've seen it as a throwaway gag in a few movies too - also usually with French speaking characters for some reason - observing how terrible baked goods (or sometimes bread specifically) are in the US.

I wonder if this is an example of emojis taking over public consciousness. The bread picture on this site is clearly the bread emoji, even though this is a picture and it could have been any bread shape.

My friends and I once (as in, one day...) went stealng bread from doorsteps in Germany, until we tasted one that was so ...different... to what we considered to be 'bread', we never did it again. Black bread? 'Different', meaning 'absolutely disgusting' to [our] tastes, at that time.

Our tastebuds have to learn to appreciate new tastes. So if you grew up on a very sugary taste palate, having dark bread for the first time will be tough. If you were unlucky enough to pick one with added caraway I'm not surprised at all. That has some strong and somewhat bitter taste and serves you right for stealing it xD

As an Austrian I can fully agree. we buy bread in full, halves or quarters and I eat it for a week without toasting. bread that is getting too dry to eat can be toasted or cut up in cubes to be used as croutons in soups and salads or used as a base for dumplings.

That's a really low hydration level for a sourdough imho.

You don't have anything like French pain de mie in Germany?

Yes, they, do. A wide variety of it.