stupid but quick question

[kaigou]

vegetarian = no eggs = no bread ... correct?

is this generally a hard-and-fast rule, enough to consider it a pretty safe assumption?


ETA: apparently the unclear part above is my expectation that bread contains eggs. Yes, as a matter of fact, bread can contain eggs -- pretty much my entire repertoire of bread-recipes all contain at least one egg. (Some of them contain two eggs, even, and some even have milk.) This is not to say I've never made bread without eggs -- I have -- but I don't much care for the texture or the reluctant timbre of the bread when working with it. With eggs, the bread is considerably silkier/smoother, and just more pleasant and easy to work with; thus it's not a headache to let it rise six times and really become amazingly-melty. Or shorter version: bread can contain eggs.

ETA the 2nd: I suppose it might've been less confusing if I'd asked about, say, angel food cake... for which my grandmother's recipe uses the whites of like a dozen eggs. I rarely make it, though, because I hate wasting a dozen egg yolks, but I'm never quite sure what to do with them...

Comments

[owlectomy]

Most western vegetarians do eat eggs, unless they're vegan, in which case they eat no eggs or dairy.
Hindu vegetarians generally don't eat eggs, though.

[kaigou]

Ahh, I thought the rule was "no eyes or a mother" (in which case, eggs could someday have eyes, so... no eggs).

[billie]

*nods* That applies for all vegetarians I know, too.
The two Japanese vegetarians I know would be vegan by my western vegetarian / vegan friends' definition -- no milk, eggs, honey, gelatine or anything else that comes from an animal; the vegans I know in Germany don't wear leather or wool, either.

[serene]

Nope, bad assumption. Most vegetarians eat eggs and bread in my country (the US). Of course, in Japan, they say vegetarianism includes fish, so assumptions probably won't really work anywhere, but in general, in the US, vegans (those who won't eat eggs) are very rare, and there's LOTS of bread that is vegetarian or vegan, so I've never actually met a vegetarian who wasn't on some kind of low-carb thing as well who didn't eat bread.

[kaigou]

Hunh, I knew there were various (personal) variations on vegetarian, but I didn't realize there were also cultural-level variations. Wah, I'd go with Japanese vegetarianism, if I were to ever end up that way. Comes with growing up on the Gulf Coast, I suppose.

[casey_valhalla]

Vegetarian = no eggs is definitely not a hard and fast rule. It varies greatly.

However, vegan always = no eggs.

Also, having been vegan for many years, I can tell you honestly that the average loaf of bread doesn't have eggs in it. Usually the problem area was whey, but even that wasn't hard to avoid.

[kaigou]

Well, vegan is pretty much easy, because it is a very strict/firm/clearly-defined kind of thing.

Actually, all the bread I've ever made always has at least one egg in it. But since I'm pretty sure I didn't bake when you came to visit, at least that means I don't think I accidentally exposed you to any eggs. Whew.

[treesahquiche]

I've never used eggs to make bread, so I'd say bread is still on the table. :)

[kaigou]

Hah, see my responses elsewhere -- all the family recipes I have memorized for bread ALL have at least one egg. My favorite recipes have two eggs! It changes the consistency of the bread in a really sweet way, which might be why I prefer those recipes. Sweet, I mean, as in silky/smooth on the tongue. More like challah bread, whereas french bread and the like (which I have made a few times, but don't have recipes handy in the brain) are much rougher/coarser.

[autopope]

What on earth makes you think bread has eggs in it?

(Some specialist breads may have eggs, dairy, or other weird rubbish in them, but bread should basically be flour, water, a small amount of fat or oil, and yeast.)

[kaigou]

Uhm, because the bread recipes I've been making my entire life always have at least one egg in them?

I don't actually have any recipes without egg. I mean, I'm sure I do in some of my books, but in terms of what I've got memorized -- always at least one egg.

ETA: ahah, it may be a cultural pretensions thing -- all the bread I know how to make is bread for "giving away" or for "when someone comes to visit". Seems to be that bread-with-eggs does give the impression of being lighter/smoother (fancier) than french or italian, which can be rather coarse or at least have a much thicker/chewier crust. Bread with egg is definitely a soft-crust kind of bread -- think dinner rolls and whatnot.

Guess I just got taught/memorized only the for-show breads. Hunh.

[raletha]

I would think most vegetarians are ovo-lacto (at least I am) and eat both eggs and dairy unless they call themselves strict vegetarians or vegans. Some vegetarians I've met eat fish (and there was one who I saw eating pork sausage on occasion, but I think she was an anomaly with vocabulary issues).

[kaigou]

Ovo-lacto! Handy term to remember.

Until I met CP (who has apparently always had red meat in his diet, whereas I was raised on mostly chicken & fish and red meat maybe once or twice a month -- and ground beef, at that!) -- my diet seemed odd enough to people that I wondered if a title would help that could be shorthand for "avoids red meat". Now I do eat far more red meat than ever before, and frankly, I really wish we could stop already. A big part of that is because I haven't the faintest clue how to cook it! Just was never something I got exposed to as a kid, so it's not even a comfort food. Now, biscuits, that's a comfort food.

an anomaly with vocabulary issues

*dies*

[quillori]

Are you thinking of vegans? I wouldn't assume a vegetarian didn't eat eggs merely on the grounds they were vegetarian, though I suppose I might suspect it on other grounds (eg, as owlectomy says, Hinduism). Also, do you mean no eggs and no bread? I read it first as no eggs thus no bread, which was a puzzlement: I mean, I guess there's things like challah and brioche, which are bread rather than cake in much the same way tomato is a vegetable rather than a fruit, but otherwise bread = no eggs. Might an extremely strict vegetarian object to yeast? But there's still unleavened bread, or even bread leavened with, say, baking powder.

[raletha]

Might an extremely strict vegetarian object to yeast?

Yeast is fungi, so, no. At least, I've never encountered a vegan who avoided fungi. ^^;

[mongrelheart]

*nodnod* to what other folks said. All the vegetarians I know, eat eggs.

[kaigou]

Whew. Now I know! I'd hate to be a bad host and offer something that implied I wasn't taking someone's diet seriously, or didn't care enough to at least be aware of the basics.

[acari]

Nope, not where I'm from. I'm the ovo-lacto kind of vegetarian so I eat both eggs and dairy products.

[kaigou]

I'm trying to console myself with the knowledge that it's better that I've long-term erred on the side of offering less rather than blindly offering more (that is, eggs-in-food) and violating someone's diet. Or else I'd be feeling like a real idiot for always thinking eggs = meat, therefore off-limits.

[leorising]

While I lived in the ashram, we were Hindu-style vegetarians. We ate milk products, but no eggs and no yeast or mushrooms (fungus are considered "semi-living", borderline sentient, IIRC.) You'll notice Indian breads like naan and chapati are not raised breads. And of course, we never ate fish or other meat.

I heard one lacto-vegetarian put it this way: nothing with a face (or potential for a face.) That was how she ate -- it's a pretty individual thing, if it's not culturally or religiously prescribed.

Here's a way around the whole controversy: if you're wanting to make bread for someone who doesn't eat eggs (for whatever reason,) and your bread recipes include egg, why not use an egg substitute/replacer? They're easily found in pretty much any store's health food section, a box lasts forever, and it works pretty well. You can't use it to make scrambled eggs or something, but it works well in recipes.

[kaigou]

When a recipe calls for one egg, then (sometimes) you can use an egg subsitute, because the egg's only in there for binding. If two eggs, then substitutes fail (at least IME), because the substitutes don't always have the same leavening ability as eggs. The crazy thing is that I've tried, many times, to make various unleavened breads similar to pita, or naan. (Though I guess sodabread is technically leavened, since the soda acts as a leavening, though I've seen recipes for it listed as "non-yeast" because technically it's not a yeast-bread, but it's certainly not a non-rising bread, at least in a chemistry sense.) But, if it doesn't have yeast or some kind of leavening, I fail. Utter fail. I'm like the uber-anti-yeast-failure. I can make scones (more soda action) but even those never quite come out right.

I think it may be due to being raised by various cooks/bakers who got it into me that bread must rise, be kneaded, rise, knead, rise, knead, and then you end up with something awesome. Bread that doesn't get kneaded to improve it leaves me a little confused, I guess.

The friend of my mother's who was vegetarian described her diet as "nothing with eyes or a mother". Which meant even unfertilized eggs were also out, since they might not have eyes but they did have a mother.

[hokuton_punch]

Well, I suppose you've got plenty of responses to go on with, but personally I still eat eggs, so eggs in bread would be fine with me. I also still eat fish, though - not very often at the moment because I don't really care for fish & chips that much and don't know a lot of good fish recipes so don't bother buying it, but next time I visit home I am going to eat ALL THE SUSHI. I'd like to phase out seafood entirely at some point, but I still don't like enough vegetables to live without it (yes, I am actually very bad at being vegetarian).

[kaigou]

Fish and chips... isn't that mostly bread and lard, anyway, with a little bit of fish in there? Oh, and the newspaper. I'm not sure it counts as fish-and-chips if it doesn't come wrapped in yesterday's newspaper. At least, the fish-and-chips I had overseas seemed to require newspaper wrapping. (I was convinced as a result that somehow newspaper + fish was a mandatory combination, since I didn't grow up with fried/breaded fish, not counting pan-fried.)

Yes. Going pure vegetarian would mean giving up sushi and that makes baby kaigous cry. Very hard.

[nagasvoice]

Quick breads like cornbread, banana bread, muffins might perhaps meet the bready need?
My mom makes biscuits all the time using vegetable shortening, and they come out divine to my palate--very light, very flaky, an essence of breadness, but this does not match what everybody else expects. For instance, they do not reek of soda, or of bacon, or of salty stuff (such as would accompany redeye gravy and eggs for breakfast) or anything else that I have heard people expect from their "traditional" versions. They're very good, though. Recipe's on the baking powder can, I think.
When vegans talk about disliking the exploitation of milk cows or chickens, some of them are talking about avoiding factory farming risks and avoiding the whole system which breeds cows who give so much milk that it scours all the calcium out of their bones in spite of supplements. That is cruel and it ends their lives prematurely--totally aside from getting sent to slaughter when their productivity drops too low. And that's part of the argument why eating milk or cheese is just as ethically wrong as eating meat.
In addition, it's a tricky point whether calves "need" the milk as long as the cows are continuing to give it. Breastfeeding is subject to a lot of reasons why it might stop or reduce regardless of what the baby needs. We work very hard to breed and support cows we can milk much longer and in higher volumes than in the old days, while the calves can survive getting weaned younger. Vegans would argue that we artificially wean calves much sooner than is normal to "wild" cows.
I'm not sure we have enough wild cows left with which to get any research on this point, either; I know there's some in places like the scrubby woods in Spain.
Then there's the argument that supporting those cows costs tremendous amounts of ag resources and risky chemicals, to control pests in the fodder that keeps those high-powered animals productive. Plus, the wastes from things like the huge hog farms and chicken ranches are a major problem.
I still like bacon sometimes, darn it. No, I'm not vegetarian or vegan. I'm not terribly tolerant of legumes, or I might live on those more, just because it's cheaper, let alone for environmental reasons. But for practical economic reasons, a lot of us are eating a lot less meat than we used to. This may not be a bad thing, taken all together.

[kaigou]

In my experience, if you're using baking soda as a leavening and the bread has any taste of soda once cooked... it means you didn't let the soda do its full work. It should exhaust itself, in a sense, by the time baking is done (ergo, bread is fully risen). The soda flavor to me says that someone rushed the chemistry, or they didn't put in enough salt to offset/tamp the soda. I mean, I know it's a taste, but still. I have three family recipes for biscuits -- one with yeast, one using eggs to leaven, and another using baking soda. The last one tastes similar to the first and second, but it doesn't tend to layer-flake quite like the first, and is more like the second in terms of being a little cakey. But since I don't usually keep a gallon of crisco in the house these days, I rarely make biscuits.

There are various reasons for any diet -- political, personal, due to allergies or sensitivities, and sometimes it's just the taste. I don't mind red meat, but I was raised on chicken, fish, and sometimes pig, more than anything else... with a whole lot of vegetables. Usually far more vegetable than meat at the table, really, which was a way to make the table look full without having too much expensive meat.

[annotated_em]

Egg yolks = lemon curd! Or other custards, but my mind turns first to lemon curd.

[kaigou]

Y'know, that would never have occurred to me in a hundred years. Probably because I've never actually made custard, but hey! Maybe this can be used as justification for pulling out Nana's divine and thoroughly sinful angel-food cake recipe.

(Better than pulling out her six-layer chocolate cake recipe, and if you want sinful, six layers of chocolate cake -- stacked so high it was held together with toothpicks to keep the layers from sliding off! -- then, well, there just ain't more sinful than that chocolate cake. But the angel food cake comes pretty close, probably neck and neck with the real pound cake recipe -- a pound, a pound, a pound, my god, someone just shoot my arteries now and get it over with.)

[okaasan59]

This is totally not helpful, but I subscribe to the Southern Louisiana Creed of Food Consumption: Eat everything that doesn't eat you first. And so I've eaten some pretty interesting things. ^_^

[kaigou]

I think you and my mom attended the same school of food consumption.

[opheliastornoway]

Egg yolk recipes - someone above mentioned lemon curd, and I would add to that any sort of creme brulee/catalan variation: we usually make them in tandem with pavlova, which takes lots of egg whites. Or, for less desserty things, there's a spinach cannelloni (sp?) recipe I do which technically calls just for the yolks, even if I'm usually lazy and use the whole egg ...

[kaigou]

Ahahah, the problem is you're mentioning nifty yolk-only recipes, and that would just end up being rationalization for making angel food cake, which has got to be among the most dangerous of cakes. Okay, not as dangerous as pound cake, but still... it's not like we're talking grade-A nutritious here!

Oh, man, food, why do you taste especially good when you're especially bad?

[dragonhand]

"What do you mean he don't eat no meat? ...it's alright. I'll make lamb!" /My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Mmmm, egg bread. Mmmm, lemon curd. Uh, what was the question?

Oh, also, I use egg yolks for egg tempura painting. Add a little water and pigment, and those watercolors are as stable and long lasting as oils. And won't crack. But I guess you don't have much use for that. XD

[kaigou]

I would save you all my egg yolks, but I suspect they probably don't keep well.

Egg-free breads

[thejeopardymaze]

One of the most famous is the french baguette, or however you spell it. There are also a lot of others made in Europe, but they're not without egg and butter filled yeast raised breads of their own either, my favorite being brioche. I hope to make a decent gluten-free version of that someday, because it's the most heavenly bread there is.

You'll find a lot of good recipes for traditional egg-free breads in pastry and bakery textbooks, or books made by bakers who specialize on the subject. One thing I've learned, the fat-free types of breads are the ones that spoil the most quickly.

I may have misread that post

[thejeopardymaze]

On the other hand, I like any excuse to talk about food.

[majoline]

I just want to know what bread recipes you have, because they sound FANTASTIC.

[kaigou]

Posted one, and Kathmandu just pointed out I'd already posted it. Figures! Guess this means I'll need to post something else to make up for it...

Another use for egg yolks

[kathmandu]

I make avgholemono broth with egg yolks. 2 cups chicken bouillon, heat to boiling. In a mixing bowl, put three egg yolks and lightly mix them with a fork. Begin adding the hot bouillon a few drops at a time, stirring constantly, so as not to shock the yolks. The idea is to expose the eggs to near-boiling temperatures without thickening the proteins. Continue gradually add the bouillon, stirring constantly, until it is all incorporated. Add lemon juice to taste, sprinkle with black pepper, and drink.

The classic version has chicken shreds and cooked rice in it too, but I'm not fond of rice and chicken is too much trouble to mess with for the little bit that would go in one serving. This is yummy, tangy, provides protein, and is very simple to make.

I would be interested to hear sometime about your family's vegetable dishes: what all did you make to have twice as many veggie dishes as people at holiday gatherings, and how did you manage the logistics of cooking and prepping them all?

[kaigou]

That sounds yummy (and we always have chicken, thanks to me, and rice, thanks to CP). Must try that sometime...

Veggies, well. For starters, I never got to be a kitchen-commandant myself; I was always under the command of a grandmother, my mother, or my father. So I really don't know how we ended up with that many dishes. But I do know that a fair number of them were made ahead of time. Pickling was frequently involved, or near-pickling, like three-bean salad, a perennial favorite. Plenty of other things are cold, but not pickled, like Waldorf salad, I think it is, and of course there's potato salad (but that actually wasn't that common). Squash was often cooked ahead of time and set out in a bowl as a cold, if cooked, dish. Baking, well, a lot of dishes bake at generally the same or near-same temperatures -- like sweet potatoes with raisins, and stuffing, and whatever else. I just recall that when the oven didn't have a turkey or ham, it usually had at least five dishes of various things. Plus all four eyes on the stove were going full-blast, if we were at my paternal grandparents, that is (if it wasn't pickled, they boiled it, sheesh, until it was merely a limp memory of its once-veggie self).

My father's parents had a huge garden, and canned an incredible amount every year (remnants of the Great Depression, I suspect, to never have an empty pantry again). During the summer, this meant day-before was spent picking vegetables til our fingers fell off (what else are grandkids for?) and wintertime, you just went across the way to the cold storage and brought back an armful of mason jars.

My mother's parents didn't have a garden, but my grandmother effectively cooked similar things -- she just used either canned goods, or things that had been canned and given to her. (She did do some canning, but mostly of figs, and not in such huge quantities.)

Honestly, I don't know how my parents managed it. From the sounds coming from the kitchen, it seemed like it was always a very close call as to whether we'd have just two salads, some bread, and a turkey... and sometimes even the turkey seemed in danger. Like the year my still-young sister turned the oven off while fiddling with the knobs. Two hours later... OH NOES.

I think the phrase we're looking for is "controlled chaos".