zoid, when I was at the American Institute of Baking some of my fellow classmates were Japanese. They let me copy off a manual they had.
As has been said the Japanese have no real bread baking tradition. They do have a craft tradition of rope braiding it seems, and this manual I copied combines the two arts. It’s a series of bread braids, up to nine or ten strands. The most complicated I have done is a six strand.
I can’t read a word of the instructional captions, but the photography shows, strand by numbered strand, in what order to make the braid.
I wish I could read Japanese, I’d love to know what the captions are telling me.
"Bread was a rock band from Los Angeles, California. They placed 13 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart between 1970 and 1977 and were a prime example of what later was labeled soft rock.
The band consisted of David Gates (vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards, violin, viola, percussion), Jimmy Griffin (vocals, guitar, keyboards, percussion), Robb Royer (bass, guitar, flute, keyboards, percussion, recorder, backing vocals), Mike Botts (drums; joined in the summer of 1969) and Larry Knechtel (bass, guitar, keyboards, harmonica; replaced Royer in 1971)."
Most of their hits were in the US, they had a few in the UK though.
Assuming this is a question about the currency meaning of bread, I’d point out that I still don’t know the answer to whether any significant cultures have existed without some form of bread. But it is definitely common in most cultures.
No bread in Thailand until very recent times. I can remember when it was for foreigners only, but all they had was that gunky white stuff. No wonder the Thais think a lot of Western food is shit. (Well, okay, so some of it is.) I’d explain to them, “No, no, there are lots of types of bread, wonderful types.” And they would stare at me skeptically, point to the white gunky stuff and say: “But this is bread.” The bakery situation here has improved dramatically in the past decade or two.
There are many now, and some pretty fancy ones too. Bakeries used to be substandard, but go cross the border at, say, Malaysia, and suddenly baked goods took a giant leap in quality. We figured it was higher-quality ingredients based on British influence. Cakes and stuff in Thailand including Bangkok would use poor-quality ingredients and some waxy-tasting stuff for icing for the large part. But again, that situation has much changed for the better in recent years.
Bread is available in South Korea, but not hugely popular. Little half-loaves of white bread are sold as boutique items in most groceries. McDonalds and Lotteria burger joints probably account for 60% of all bread sold there, and Paris Baguette (and similar) shops might account for another 20%. Traditional Korean restaurants don’t sell bread in any form.
The only place I’ve noticed in China or Southeast Asia with a significant bread culture is Vietnam. Everywhere else is dominated by heavily processed white bread often filled with sweet goop. Probably the best aspect of French colonialism was the spread of good bread and coffee.
I don’t know if I’d agree with that. There is a ton of bread places, mostly modeled after the European (probably more specifically French) bakeries. Certainly things like sliced bread or loafs of bread aren’t as popular, but bread pastries definitely are.
Laos, too, has wonderful bread, especially French bread. As with Vietnam, it’s the French influence. (Who said colonialism was a bad thing?) Cambodia might have had it, but it was probably crushed out by the Khmer Rouge.