A flat-topped loaf of white sandwich bread that gets baked in a square-sided loaf pan with a lid is, culinarily, known as a Pullman loaf. It goes without saying, the technical term for the loaf pan itself is a Pullman pan. The fancy French terms for a Pullman loaf are "pain-de-mie" ("pain" meaning "bread", and "mie" meaning "the soft white inner part of the loaf"), and, "pain anglais" (meaning "English loaf"). It's a loaf of somewhat-firm-yet-soft enriched white bread with perfectly square sides and minimal crust. It slices easily, making it the quintessential sandwich loaf.
The Pullman loaf is the quintessential white sandwich loaf:
The history behind the Pullman pan & the story of the loaf:
The name "Pullman" comes from its use in the kitchens of the Pullman Company's railway cars of the 1800s. The company is credited with inventing the rectangular-shaped lidded baking pans (which coincidentally resembled the shape of the railroad cars). Baking bread with the lids on the pans created flat-topped loaves, which made it possible to efficiently stack more loves in a smaller space compared to loaves with rounded tops -- three flat-topped Pullman loaves occupied about the same amount of space as two standard round-topped loaves in the small Pullman kitchen.
Baking bread in a pan with a lid is, of course, functionally a bit different than baking bread in an open-topped pan, which, of course, affects the crumb structure. The confined space, which doesn't allow most of the steam to escape, prevents big air bubbles from forming, which keeps the crumb fine and tight, which renders it easy to slice thin, and, it keeps the crust to a minimum too. There's more. Because the Pullman loaf is a perfectly square loaf, uniform in shape throughout its length, it's hands-down the bread-of-choice for making user-friendly sandwiches, plus, the thin crust means there's very little waste when a perfect presentation requires trimming off the crust.
The Pullman loaf pan = A rectangular pan w/straight sides & lid. Full-loaf-size pan (yields a 2-pound loaf) = approx. 13" x 4.8" x 4.8". Half-loaf pan (yields a 1-pound loaf) = approx. 8.35" x 4.5" x 4.5":
The Pullman loaf = A flat-topped sandwich loaf w/minimal crust & square, fine-&-tight-crumbed easy-to-slice-thin slices:
Try my recipe & learn to bake a Pullman loaf in a Pullman pan:
"We are all in this food world together." ~ Melanie Preschutti
(Recipe, Commentary and Photos courtesy of Melanie's Kitchen/Copyright 2021)
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