Difference between bread and cake?

Banana Bread is considered a quick bread. It is essentially a cake or muffin. Traditional bread uses yeast for leavening and has a well developed gluten structure. Cakes and quick bread have minimal gluten development and use chemical leaveners like baking powder.

Like most non-technical words, there is at least some ambiguity. First, I will dismiss a few special cases.

Preceded by "short-" both words change meaning from the standard. Shortbread is a type of cookie, shortcake is a type of scone. (Humorously, I have to resort to the American "cookie" and the British "scone" because in Britain, a cookie is called a biscuit, where in America, a scone is called a biscuit. So depending on one's POV, *both* shortbread and shortcake are "biscuits"!)

"Cake" in a non-baking context can refer to any food that's been compressed into a solid block, usually with one definitely smallest dimension. Thus we have rice cakes, yeast cakes, etc.

But generally, at least by my way of looking at it, the difference between bread and cake is that in cake, the amount of eggs is sufficient to contribute substantially to the *structure*, not just the *texture*. That, I realize, is a very vague point in itself, although in general cakes will be less dense than breads because once eggs start to have an impact on the structure, that impact is to make it lighter. In fact, a cake doesn't have to have any flour at all, thanks to the structure contribution of eggs, for example flourless chocolate cake. However, a cake must have some other contributor to structure besides eggs, otherwise things like souffle would be a cake. It's all quite fuzzy and the boundaries overlap to some extent. But this is at least a close approximation to the way I see things being named.

I've heard that when Marie Antoinette said "let them eat cake," that cake was actually bread, and now people are a bit non-plussed about her statement. Dee

Technically, Bread is a combination of flour and water, with the addition of yeast for leavening. FDA labelling states White Bread must be a minimum based on flour weight of 2% salt, 2% sugar, 2% shortening and 2% milk powder. To be classified as a dough, the principle ingredients must flour and water, in that order. All batter mixes and pastes such as quick breads, i.e. tea biscuits, banana bread, muffins, are sweet goods.

Mr. Pastry

(Humorously,

difference is easy and not technical, cake tastes nicer!!