Name for end piece of bread?

Factual Questions
1

You know the first and last slices of bread? Some people call it the heel, or just “the end piece”. My family and my girlfriends’ family, however, call it a “Putka”, or “Pudka”.

My instincts tell me this is a Polish term, as both our families have lived on the south side for many generations (and are part Polish), but I can’t Google it because I’m sure that those spellings are wrong.

Can someone familiar with Polish confirm or deny the, er, Polish-ness of “putka”? I suppose it could be German or Yiddish as well…

2

I’ve never known it as anything but the heel. Thanks for an alternative.

3

The heel is all I know and it makes sense.

4

I’ve always called it the butt. I’m not sure where that came from.

5

I called it a heel for 25 years. Then my son came home from school one day and informed me it’s called the “butt” of the bread. Works for me!

6

I too call it the butt because it is smelly. I always toss the butts of the bread. I like my plain bread light and airy not dense and butty. Dense bread has to be special like pumpkin, banana or zucchini.

7

Heel, or end.

Great on a nice crusty loaf, to be avoided at all costs on a sliced white bread loaf.

8

I call it the stub.

I usually end up being the one making a sandwich out of the bread stubs, because I don’t like to waste them.

9

We always called it the Crust.
Depending on the context the word was used in we never had trouble distingishing between the crust on the end, and the crust around the outside.

10

If I have sliced bread, I call the end the crust.

11

I always called it the heel, but I learn new things on the Dope everyday. Apparently, I like butt.

12
  1. What do you call the end of a loaf of bread?
    a. end (17.29%)
    b. heel (59.15%)
    c. crust (15.21%)
    d. nose (0.17%)
    e. butt (3.53%)
    f. shpitzel (0.05%)
    g. I have no word for this (1.97%)
    h. other (2.63%)
    (10665 respondents)

http://cfprod01.imt.uwm.edu/Dept/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_111.html

13

Mmmmm…bread heel.

14

Hey, ignorant, but learning, here---- I just googled it and pudka is a doll of some sort- I think oriental and putka is a mini pumpkin!

I call the ends of the bread heels. The “crust” is all around the bread!

15

I just asked a Polish co-worker for the Polish word for the end of a loaf of bread. She said it’s “pietka.”

16

also, origin of putka is bulgarian…it says in google

17

A long-ago roommate called it the “bread protector.”

18

:cool:

So “pudka” or “putka” would just be derived from “pietka”. Did she pronounce it “Pee-yayt-ka” or was it closer to the way I say it?

19

As I said, heel for end of bread…MY BIG QUESTION is "Does anyone know how to make “BROWNIE CRUST” out of the whole pan of brownoies? You know how the whole family wants to cut around the pan to get the chewy edges? I want the whole PAN to be that “chewy, crunchy, fudgy” consistency! Help!

20

I didn’t get her to pronounce it. I only sent her an email (we are on different floors). There’s actually a special character from what I’ve been able to discern online: PIĘTKA

Online translation engines give this as a English-Polish translation of heel.

Anyway, if I see in person today, I’ll ask her to say the word.