The top 10 breads in the world

March 23, 2020 by
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Although I will happily eat a burnished baguette, a slice of sourdough, or a puffy pita, I’m a sucker for a pillowy, soft white sandwich bread. I’m sure everyone has their favorite bread, but few people are willing to state what they believe to be the top 10 breads in the entire world. But Tim Carman of The Washington Post has done just that, and makes the case for each.

Carman doesn’t stop with yeasted bread formed into loaves, his criteria for what constitutes a bread is “loose and open-ended: It involves grains, milled and transformed into doughs or batter, and heated into something bready and wonderful, with or without yeast.” His list includes breads from across the globe, everything from baguettes to tortillas to paratha.

If you do not agree with Carman’s choices, he is fine with that. He knows that his picks are probably not going to be the same as yours. “Bread is personal,” he notes.

Can’t read enough about bread? When you are finished reading Carman’s top 10 list, head over to Post Magazine for an interview with South African native and Hong Kong baker Zahir Mohamed. After experiencing racism in Cape Town, Mohamed decided to get a fresh start. He arrived in Hong Kong with nothing more than a suitcase that contained his sourdough starter, which has been nourished by his family for 50 years. Now that starter has been put to work in Mohamed’s bakery.

Photo of My easy ‘baguette’ from Delicious Magazine (Aus)

Category: Antipasto

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7 Comments

  • trudys_person  on  March 23, 2020

    Sadly, there seems to be a paywall on the Washington Post site – I get a big grey X across my screen …

  • eliza  on  March 24, 2020

    A pretty good list but they missed my favourite bread of all time, Montreal Bagels.

  • averythingcooks  on  March 24, 2020

    Lots of my choices also on this list BUT perhaps I invite derision when I say that the perfectly toasted English muffin with a salty butter is hard to beat.

  • averythingcooks  on  March 24, 2020

    Many of my choices are also on this list but…..perhaps this invites derision but a perfectly toasted English muffin with melty salty butter is hard to resist!

  • gcrawf216  on  March 24, 2020

    So what’s your favorite white sandwich bread recipe? I just made KAF’s Classic White Sandwich Bread and it’s delicious but not my fave.

  • darcie_b  on  March 24, 2020

    I usually make mine up as I go, but I use tangzhong, 5:1 water/flour, taking the flour from the amount needed for the whole recipe. So if the recipe calls for 400 grams flour, I will take 50 g flour and make tangzhong with that + 250g water, then proceed with the rest of the recipe as is, adding the tangzhong at the same time as the liquid used in the recipe. I shoot for a ~55% hydration lightly enriched dough. Here’s an introduction to tangzhong: https://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2018/03/26/introduction-to-tangzhong

  • kdunkel  on  March 29, 2020

    Why publish an article that we can’t read unless we subscribe to The Washington Post?

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