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

[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.

[maire]

Naan is leavened with yeast, usually, in my experience. It's flat, but a little puffy.

Breads with eggs in are, in my head, 'luxury' breads. They're lovely, but one can easily make delicious bread at home with just oil, salt, yeast, flour, and water.