Showing posts with label date nut bread. Show all posts
Showing posts with label date nut bread. Show all posts

Sunday, 8 September 2019

National Date Nut Bread Day

September 8th is National Date Nut Bread Day in the United States.

Now, this is one of the more specific food days out there. Not merely bread, or date bread, or nut bread, but date-nut bread.

Breads can be sweet or savoury, depending on the ingredients. This bread is one that would probably be classified as sweet. Nuts can be used in both sweet and savoury breads, but dates are unlikely to be found in anything but a sweet bread.

Different nuts (using the culinary definition of the term) can be used to make the bread, but walnuts are a popular one. The nuts will be chopped up before being adding to the bread mix. Dates are the fruit of the date palm, which is now grown widely around the world for the fruit. The origin of the date palm is unknown, but it was probably in Mesopotamia, and they are still a common ingredient and food in the Middle East. Dates have been eaten for many thousands of years. Dates can be eaten fresh, but they are often used dried, with the stone removed from them. In date-nut bread, the dates are most likely dried and chopped.

Saturday, 22 December 2018

National Date Nut Bread Day

National Date Nut Bread Day is on December 22nd in the United States.

This is another really specific food day, as it celebrates not just any old type of bread, but one with two particular ingredients.

Bread, in all its many different varieties, is one of the oldest prepared foods, dating back to the dawn of agriculture. It is quite a flexible dish, as many additional ingredients can be added to it. Date nut bread is one of the varieties that is of a sweeter, rather than savoury, nature.

The date is the fruit of the date palm, and dates have been harvested for thousands of years. They originated in the Middle east, probably in the region of Iraq, and, given that they would have been collected by hunter gatherers before they were cultivated, have been a source of food even longer than bread. The other ingredient, nuts is similarly a foodstuff that would have been gathered prior to being cultivated, but "nut" refers to many different varieties of food, many of which are not even, botanically, nuts.