What ingredient or method causes a mixture to be a bread versus cake?

penguin_pam

Sometimes I try to make a bread but the texture comes out more like a muffin even when I use a loaf baking pan. I have even tried premixed bread (similar to premixed boxed cakes) and while the taste is nice, the texture is not what I am looking to have. I'm trying to figure out what ingredient gives bread that coarse texture versus the smooth texture of muffins. I am thinking along the lines of coarse crumby breakfast type breads or dark breads...

Originally asked by Lyn on Stack Exchange (cooking) (CC BY-SA 3.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

Multiple factors give cake and bread its distinct attributes: Fat/sugar content: a bread is generally very lean. Most traditional breads do not have any fat or sugar in it at all. Cake will generally have a high fat content from either butter, oil, or milk. Breads will taste "drier" than cake because it lacks this fat content. Cake will also have a large content of sugar compared to bread. Often case the sugar is creamed with the butter to give the batter some of its structure. The more air that is incorporated into the sugar/butter mixture the "lighter" the cake will be. Leavening: Cakes will be leavened using baking soda and/or baking powder. This type of chemical leavening is very quick...

Full answer by Jay: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/61722 (CC BY-SA 3.0).

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