Hot bread and belly-aches

[emsny]

Over on the Restaurant Life forum the topic "Some thoughts on restaurant bread rituals" briefly touched on the question of why freshly baked bread gives you a belly ache if you eat it when it is still hot. Does anybody here in the Baking forum have an answer?

Edited September 15, 2007 by emsny (log)

[Luckylies]

Hot bread is squishy, and extra tasty you can eat 1,000 times more voila! tummy ache.

[Fat Guy]

My own reactions depend on the bread. Most white breads -- bagels, baguettes, Parker House rolls -- don't give me a belly-ache when eaten warm. Heavier breads based on whole wheat and rye flours, however, do.

[chefpeon]

I've never experienced or known of the phenomenon of hot bread bellyaches. And I've eaten a lot of hot bread in my day.

However........

I do know that raw bread dough gives you a heck of a tummy ache.

Think of all that yeast workin' in your stomach. Yeah baby.

Uh, not that I've actually eaten raw bread dough.

[SundaySous]

Still hot as in right out of the oven hot? One Mr Alton Brown mentions that you have to let bread rest one half hour before slicing so protein and starch structures have time to set. My guess would be there is some kind gas exchange thing going on which might carry over into your tummy. Just a guess though.

I'm also guessing most warm bread in a restaurant came out of a bread warmer and not an oven though. Kinda shoots my first theory straight to Hell huh?

[chefmoni]

perhaps you're intolerant to yeast...like me

[alanamoana]

by the time bread comes out of the oven, the yeast is long dead...aside from alcohol and carbon dioxide (which should also have evaporated by then), what is residual in hot bread that wouldn't be there in cold bread?

i've never heard of this phenomenon and i've eaten a ton of hot bread in my life, either heated or fresh out of the oven.

[beccaboo]

According to my grandma, fresh bread gives you worms!

[gfron1]

HERE'S a snopes.com review of if eating bread makes you a felon or violent criminal.

[paulraphael]

real bread-heads tell us that bread is best appreciated after it's cooled. but i remain a philistine and love nothing more than hot, fresh-baked bread ... cool enough to be done cooking in the middle, warm enough to melt butter. never had a belly ache, but might be able to blame a violent crime or two on it.

any thoughts on why bread is supposedly better cool?

[chefpeon]

any thoughts on why bread is supposedly better cool?

Well I suppose the artisan bread maker will tell you that you can enjoy the crispiness of a properly baked loaf better when it's cool, and I do know that when you eat something that's fairly warm, you do miss out on subtle flavor nuances. I'm one of those people that likes to let my food cool down to nearly room temp before I eat it......it truly tastes better that way.

Except bread of course. I have been known to tear into a loaf like a caveman when it's hot out of the oven!

[alanamoana]

real bread-heads tell us that bread is best appreciated after it's cooled. but i remain a philistine and love nothing more than hot, fresh-baked bread ... cool enough to be done cooking in the middle, warm enough to melt butter. never had a belly ache, but might be able to blame a violent crime or two on it.

any thoughts on why bread is supposedly better cool?

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to allow for final evaporation of moisture

finishing of starch gelatinization and protein coagulation...notice when you slice warm bread that it is a bit gummy? that's the starch and moisture.

[GlorifiedRice]

I've never experienced or known of the phenomenon of hot bread bellyaches. And I've eaten a lot of hot bread in my day.

However........

I do know that raw bread dough gives you a heck of a tummy ache.

Think of all that yeast workin' in your stomach. Yeah baby.

Uh, not that I've actually eaten raw bread dough.  

←

There was an old episode of Adam-12 where they responded to a house where a man had eaten a loaf of raw bread dough and his stomach "Rised" and it was funny cause the fake tummy they gave him was a rectangle.

[Dignan]

There was an old episode of Adam-12 where they responded to a house where a man had eaten a loaf of raw bread dough and his stomach "Rised" and it was funny cause the fake tummy they gave him was a rectangle.

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I saw this, and I'm sure it was "Emergency!" I never watched Adam-12. It actually made me try bread dough once, since apparently it was tasty. I didn't enjoy it.

[chefpeon]

There was an old episode of Adam-12 where they responded to a house where a man had eaten a loaf of raw bread dough and his stomach "Rised" and it was funny cause the fake tummy they gave him was a rectangle.

If it were an Emergency!/Adam-12 episode made today, the belly shape they would have given him would have been probably a pain como or a baguette, complete with the slashes in the top of the loaf.......

Back then, artisanal bread was Wonder Bread.............

Edited September 17, 2007 by chefpeon (log)

[GlorifiedRice]

There was an old episode of Adam-12 where they responded to a house where a man had eaten a loaf of raw bread dough and his stomach "Rised" and it was funny cause the fake tummy they gave him was a rectangle.

←

I saw this, and I'm sure it was "Emergency!" I never watched Adam-12. It actually made me try bread dough once, since apparently it was tasty. I didn't enjoy it.

←

You are correct!

Season 5, Episode 22: The Great Crash Diet

Original Air Date: 21 February 1976

Conducting a fire inspection, Roy and John rescue a diver in a fish tank. A birthday boy eats raw dough and gets a stomachache. An experiment in firefighter nutrition becomes an obsession for Chet. A woman goes into labor while her mother experiences chest pains. Capt. Stanley is severely injured when he gets an electric shock from a fallen power line.

[andiesenji]

I began working in my mom's bakery when I was 15.

We used to unload the oven, knock the loaves of the pans and as soon as we finished the first batch, split a loaf lengthwise and slather on the butter (purchased in 30-pound tins - this was, after all, Wisconsin!) chop it into chunks with a dough knife and consume it while it was still hot.

I don't recall ever having a bellyache. Or gaining weight - I was about a size-seven at the time and remained so for the next 25 years. I still eat bread straight from the oven, or when it has cooled enough to pick up without burning my fingers.

[Sam Salmon]

Agree with above-never heard the bellyache angle.

If it's hurting your stomach you didn't apply enough butter or jam!

[djyee100]

The Shakers, according to one source I read, allowed their bread to "season" for 24 hours after baking before eating it. No fresh hot bread for them. (They were strict believers in celibacy, also.)

I've noticed that hot bread offers more of the fresh wheat flavor, besides very pleasurable warm texture and softness, but cooled bread allows you to taste more of the quality of the fermentation in the bread.

I've never had a stomach ache just from eating hot bread. Tossing a bunch of hot loaves in the middle of a table, surrounded by friends, and eating half a loaf immediately, slathered with butter and jam, as my friends did the same--that's another story.

[alanamoana]

The Shakers, according to one source I read, allowed their bread to "season" for 24 hours after baking before eating it. No fresh hot bread for them. (They were strict believers in celibacy, also.)

←

there's a reason there aren't any more shakers...no hot bread!