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

[quillori]

Fascinating! One can always learn something new - I had no idea there were parts of America where the standard bread was with egg. Actually, I didn't know there was anywhere at all where bread was commonly eaten as bread where that was true (I mean, where bread itself isn't a common staple, I can see things on the bread/cake border might be the most common, because the only real use of bread would be as a not-very-sweet type of cake, but I can't think of anywhere else where bread is a staple and it's made with eggs - I'd love to hear from anyone who can think of other places that do this: is it as uncommon as I thought, or have I been staggeringly unobservant?). I would've pretty much defined bread as some sort of flour, water (or, occasionally, some other liquid) and some sort of leaven (unless, of course, it's unleavened bread) - all my baking books, if they mention any bread with eggs (most don't), mention it as an anomalous addition. (I've always been amazed that so few ingredients can result in such an incredibly wide range of breads.)

(RE people's assumptions - years ago a good friend of mine became a vegetarian and I was quite torn whether to admit to her that her favourite biscuits, the special ones I made just for her because she loved them, contained lard. She didn't cook herself, and wasn't much interested in the subject, so it hadn't really occurred to her that animal products went into sweet things as well.)

[kaigou]

Maybe it has something to do with what was available? Bread made without eggs uses gluten to bind it together -- yeast with wheat, and whatnot. One egg in a recipe usually means the egg is there as a binder; two eggs and you get into the eggs being part of the leavening. Quick breads usually use egg, rather than yeast, as the main part of the rising action... that's my general recollection from childhood lessons. Baking soda is an alternate way to leaven, but then you have to keep a careful eye on the salt-content because that's needed to offset the leavening (keep it from going haywire).

So perhaps it had something to do with what was available, and how long one could take prior to cooking? Sourdough is a lengthy process, and requires either daily care or outside-contact -- that is, someone to give you a cup of starter!

My grandmother's biscuits were made with baking soda as leavening, until my mom introduce her mother-in-law to the notion of using yeast in biscuits. I seem to recall the alternate recipe from that grandmother was one that used eggs as leavening, and it's mostly a matter of taste. The use of egg makes the bread smoother, and knowing what I do know of how people frequently tried to fake "good" (store-bought or high-quality) bread by various means, and knowing that eggless bread usually has a coarser texture, I can see the egg-based versions as being bread you set on the table to impress people. It's fluffier, lighter, a little sweeter, and definitely does not look like farmer's bread.

Frankly, I'm not sure how you can make good biscuits without lard. Oh, I'm sure there are recipes out there, but taste-wise it really makes a difference. Then again, I almost never have lard or lard-like stuff in the house anymore, so I haven't made biscuits in years!

[(Anonymous)]

Sounds about right to me.

In my family the basic yeast bread (without eggs) is something you make when the cost of storebought bread is high enough that it's more economical to make your own. It's ordinary boring bread for family use.

Holiday breads (or sweet breads) are almost always made with eggs and generally milk as well.

Kat

[kaigou]

And then there's actual sweetbreads and those... *shudder* It's like a name meant to fake you out. Sounds great, and then you ask what sweetbreads really are -- and if you're about eight when you get the answer, it's an immediate "ewwww!" kind of sense. Well, was for me. I still ate them (because pain-of-death was the alternative) but it was a lot harder to remain ignorant.

Which ironically was why I first avoided many of my Nana's recipes, because she labeled the type of milk as either "sour milk" (buttermilk) or "sweet milk" (regular whole milk). But that association of "sweet" being used to lie to you about what it was had me kinda wary... until my mom finally figured out and explained it to me. A'course, after that, I refused to drink buttermilk, having thus discovered that it was really another fake name for something sour. Heh.