VIENNOISERIE
Viennoiserie are buttery, flaky breakfast bread and pastries made with laminated dough, a technique of layering and folding a yeast dough to create brioche, croissants, danish, pain au chocolate, and other so-called “Viennoiserie.” It is a marriage between traditional bread baking and sweet pastry baking. The technique of lamination produces many buttery layers that can be pulled apart to reveal thin leaves within. You can see the striations, or layers, of pastry when you look at the top of the Viennoiserie or when you cut into them. This technique is time-consuming and expensive (because of the amount of butter needed). According to legend (subsequently disproved), the croissant was created to commemorate the defeat of the Turks in Vienna; hence, the group of specialty breads became known as Viennoiserie. See croissant for the accurate history.

You can see the difference in the fluffy, flaky, buttery dough of the Viennoiserie (croissants at the top, pain au chocolat in the center, and the kouing aman at the far right top) and the non-Viennoiserie flat scone at the bottom right. Photo © copyright Les Madeleines.

 

WHOLE WHEAT BREAD
Whole-wheat bread is made from whole-wheat flour. Unlike white flour, whole wheat has not been refined; the bran and germ of the wheat grain, which contain most of the nutrition and fiber, have been retained prior to milling. Bread made from whole-wheat flour is light brown in color. Until recent times, when the superior nutrition of this bread has been acknowledged, brown bread, which is cheaper to make than refined white bread, was considered aesthetically inferior, and relegated to the poorer classes that could not afford white bread.

WHOLE GRAIN or WHOLEGRAIN

BREAD
A whole grain loaf can be made in any size and shape from one or more whole grains. Whole grains that are baked into bread include corn, flaxseed, hemp, oats, rye, spelt (farro), and whole wheat. For more information, including a full list of whole grains, read our article about whole-grain cereals.

Note that loaves described as “multigrain,” “7 grain,” etc. are not whole grain unless they so specify. Otherwise, they most likely contain a variety of refined grains that are not whole grains.

WRAP or ROLL-UP
Wrap is short for a wrap sandwich. Instead of a roll or two slices of bread, a flatbread, generally a tortilla, is used to make the sandwich. The sandwich is called a wrap or a roll-up because the filling is “rolled up” in the tortilla.

WILD YEAST
Artisan bread makers use wild yeasts instead of commercially produced yeasts, and wild yeast is required to make authentic sourdough.

There are many varieties of wild yeast, each with its own flavor characteristics. Several different kinds can be found in a single starter. See yeast, below.

The history of the use of wild yeast may predate the alphabet. Hieroglyphics that are 5,000 years old show Egyptians using yeast to leaven bread and ferment alcohol. Since they had no understanding of, or control over, the microorganisms, the process was a mystery.

Over millennia, yeast starters were maintained. It was not until the invention of the microscope, followed by the pioneering work of Louis Pasteur in the late 1860s, that yeast was identified as a living organism and the agent responsible for alcoholic fermentation and dough leavening.

Shortly following these discoveries, it became possible to isolate yeast strains in a pure culture form. Commercial production of baker’s yeast began around the turn of the 20th century.

Since then, it has been discovered that different strains of yeast are better in different situations. The commercial yeast used for leavening bread today is Saccharomyces cerevisiae (also used for brewing beer, whiskey, and other alcoholic beverages). Commercial yeast is made from a pure culture to produce uniform results.