bread roll

The tradition & historical record

A bread roll is a small, oblong (or round, triangular or rhomboid) individual loaf of bread, usually served with a meal and eaten plain or with butter. Rolls can be served whole or cut and filled to make a sandwich. ¹

Rolls are common throughout Europe, under many names, including local and dialectal ones, often diminutives of "bread". Rolls range from white rolls made with wheat flour, to dark rolls containing mostly rye flour. Many variants include spices, such as coriander and cumin, or nuts. Also common are bread rolls containing or garnished with whole seeds such as sesame, poppy, pumpkin or sunflower. French rolls are various bread rolls with a baguette-like crust. In Germany, rolls are Brötchen; in Switzerland, Brötli. Other German names include Rundstück ("round piece") in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein; Weckerl or more specific Semmel in Austria, Saxony and southern Bavaria; Weck and Weckle in much of Baden-Württemberg, Franconia and Saarland; Schrippe in Berlin and parts of Brandenburg. Some of these names are used in other European languages as well, for example as zsemle in Hungarian, or rundstykker ("round pieces") in Danish and Norwegian. In the Netherlands they are called broodje. The Doppelweck or Doppelbrötchen is a type of bread roll originating from the Saarland consisting of two rolls joined together side-by-side before baking. Similarly, the Röggelchen of the Rhineland is a double rye roll. A lye roll is a roll-shaped pretzel. The Italian diminutive panino means both the roll and a sandwich made from a roll. The Kaisersemmel reappears in Italy as the Michetta or Rosetta. In Swedish, a bread roll is a (frukost) bulle '(breakfast) bun', franskbrödbulle 'French bread bun' or simply fralla 'bun', and is eaten with butter and a topping (marmalade, cheese, ham, salami) for special weekend breakfasts. In Ticino, Switzerland, pane ticinese is made to separate into rolls. ¹

Bread rolls are popular in the Arab world and come in many varieties and names, "French-like" bread rolls exist in many forms. Eish fino is a baguette-like bread roll that is popular in Egypt. It is also known as Samouli bread (Arabic: صامولي). "Samoon" bread (Arabic: سمون, not to be confused with samoon bread) is used in the Arab world for a variety of medium to high rising breads, like burger buns. Other names for or varieties of bread rolls include hamam bread (Arabic: حمام, romanized: ḥamām), popular in Jordan. Bread rolls are consumed in large quantities around the region, and are considered everyday items, to the extent that the price of some varieties of bread rolls is subsidized in some countries, like Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. ¹

In Hong Kong and Macau, dyun faat baau (短法包, literally "short French bread" or "short baguette"), also known as the zyu zai baau (豬仔包, "piggy bun"), is used to make pork chop buns. ¹

Fried in butter and served with a mashed vegetable curry, bread rolls (pav) are a key component of the popular Mumbai street snack pav bhaji. ¹

Across Latin America, the terms pan francés (Spanish) or pão francês (Portuguese), both meaning "French bread", refer to various baguette-like bread rolls made with wheat flour, salt, water and yeast. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Bread roll”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

bread roll is small, usually round or oblong individual loaf of bread served as a meal accompaniment, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 17 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²