Published in The Prague Post, c. 2000. Text from the author's final draft; the printed version may differ slightly.
The tendency of Americans to call nearly everything made of dough bread is unbelievable to a Czech. Their British cousins are a little more discerning but still fall short of the Czech standard. I have counted no fewer than nine different words that are commonly used and which could be translated basically as bread. If you look in a dictionary, the translation of bread will be chléb and textbooks typically start you off with the colloquial version chleba. But English is prone to apply the term bread to anything made of dough that isn't sweet. Although the term bread-roll is available it is rarely pulled out of the lexical hat. All in all Americans will ask for bread and be content with basically anything that doesn't actually have whipped cream on it. Not so Czechs. If you want to name baker's products accurately, you have to master a combination of criteria depending on the type of dough, shape and method of assembling the shape. Here's a list of the most important ones.
There is, of course, chleba (a.k.a. chléb) which can be kulatý (round), tmavý (dark), celozrnný (whole-grain) and many others. That's where it stops. Everything else is subsumed under the category of pečivo which can be loosely translated as 'bread that cannot be translated as chleba'. The two key representatives of this category are rohlík and houska. They are made of the same dough but rohlík is sort of an elongated roll bent into a slight C-shape (and is often translated as roll) while houska is round, bun-shaped made by weaving together strips of dough. Houska has a variant called žemle which is a true bun with a star-shape cut into its top. For those venturing East of Prague it may be important to know that Moravians do not know the word houska and use bulka instead. If houska or rohlík are made of dark bread-like dough, they will be called dalamánek. Whole-grain rohlíks have recently become popular under the name kornšpic. Rohlíks made of slightly sweet dough are called loupák. There is also a larger version of houska going under the name of pletenka or pletenec. There are two kinds of baguette: one made of slightly heavier dough is called veka and the other, slightly lighter, is a comparative new comer and is called familiarly bageta. If you slice veka and plump potato salad, pickles and ham you will create chlebíček a sort of cholesterol shot extremely popular in Czech delis.
Chleba has great importance for the Czech culture. There are at least 86 proverbs, sayings and superstitions containing the word mostly as metaphor for livelihood. One saying Všude je chleba o dvou kůrkách (Everywhere the bread has two crusts) is imparting to us the great truth that life is difficult everywhere. It also shows that Czech proverbs don't always know what they're talking about. On Czech bread, there are two sorts of crust (kůrka): the upper, brown and crunchy is the good part, that everybody likes and the lower which the bread lay on while being baked and is not nearly as exciting to eat. On my travels, I have always been struck by how many countries break that rule. Indeed, as I'm writing this, in good old London, I'm munching on a slice so singularly crustless that it would have an old Czech's head spinning with nausea for a week.
Czech's are proud of their bread and consider sliced bread an abomination rather than a benchmark for the greatness of inventions. There is a proverb Kdo se nesrovná s chlebem, nesrovná se s lidmi (If you cannot make peace with bread, you cannot make peace with people) meaning that if you cannot cut bread properly you're a no good blackguard*.* Especially in the past, bread had a near-religious significance. As in many cultures, visitors were welcomed with loaf of bread salt (a custom still being revived at official functions) and it was a portent of bad luck if somebody broke a piece off a loaf. Presumably, making a bread dip in the last century would have you burnt at the stake.
It is therefore a wise visitor who follows these bread-related dos and don'ts. Never refer to anything but chleba as bread. Never spread butter on the round part of rohlík, that's what the flat part is for, unless you want to look very very stupid. Don't imply that there is no difference between houska and rohlík because there is. And finally, never ever say that knedlík is bread. It is a wrong and heretic statement which should have you sent back to wherever you came from. But that is another story.
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