Chapter II: Preface: i (1)

CONTENTS 1

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS, CHIEFLY WITH REGARD TO 7
THE CHEMICAL CONSTITUTION AND NUTRITIVE QUALITY
OF THE SUBSTANCES OF FOOD DERIVED FROM THE
VEGETABLE KINGDOM

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE ART OF MAKING BREAD 25

BREAD CORN 30

THE BREAD-FRUIT 39

SAGO BREAD, and SAGO 41

CASAVA BREAD, and TAPIOCA 43

PLANTAIN BREAD 45

BANANA BREAD 46

BREAD OF DRIED FISH 47

BREAD MADE OF MOSS 49

BREAD MADE OF EARTH 50

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ANALYSIS OF BREAD FLOUR 52

QUANTITY OF FLOUR OBTAINABLE FROM VARIOUS KINDS OF 55
CEREAL AND LEGUMINOUS SEEDS EMPLOYED IN THE
FABRICATION OF BREAD, AND DIFFERENT KINDS OF
FLOUR MANUFACTURED FROM WHEAT

REASON WHY OATS, PEASE, BEANS, RICE, MAIZE, 58
MILLET, BUCKWHEAT, AND OTHER NUTRITIVE GRAINS
CANNOT BE MADE INTO LIGHT AND POROUS BREAD

THEORY OF THE PANIFICATION OF BREAD FLOUR 61

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UNLEAVENED BREAD 66

OATMEAL CAKES 68

MIXED OATMEAL AND PEASE BREAD 69

UNLEAVENED MAIZE BREAD 70

UNLEAVENED BEAN-FLOUR BREAD 71

UNLEAVENED BUCKWHEAT BREAD 71

UNLEAVENED ACORN BREAD 72

SEA BISCUIT 73

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LEAVENED BREAD 79

LEAVENED RYE BREAD 83

HUNGARIAN RYE BREAD 85

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BREAD MADE WITH YEAST 88

METHOD OF MAKING WHEATEN BREAD, AS PRACTISED BY 93
THE LONDON BAKERS

QUANTITY OF BREAD OBTAINABLE FROM A GIVEN QUANTITY 97
OF WHEATEN FLOUR

HOME-MADE WHEATEN BREAD 100

TO MAKE PAN-BREAD 102

BROWN WHEATEN BREAD 103

MIXED WHEATEN BREAD 104

ROLLS 105

FRENCH BREAD 105

MUFFINS AND CRUMPETS 105

BARLEY BREAD 109

MIXED BARLEY BREAD 111

RYE BREAD 112

TURNIP BREAD 114

RICE BREAD 116

POTATOE BREAD 121

POTATOE ROLLS 124

APPLE BREAD 125

DOMESTIC OVEN FOR BAKING BREAD 126

POPULAR ERRORS CONCERNING THE QUALITY OF BREAD 133

LAWS PROHIBITING THE ADULTERATION OF BREAD AND 149
BREAD FLOUR

ECONOMICAL APPLICATION OF YEAST 162

ECONOMICAL PREPARATION OF YEAST 165

ECONOMICAL METHOD OF MAKING YEAST, RECOMMENDED BY 165
DR. LETTSOM

POTATOE YEAST 166

METHOD OF PRESERVING YEAST 167

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A

TREATISE

ON THE ART OF MAKING

Good and Wholesome Bread.

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PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.

To most animals nature has designed a limited range of aliment, when compared to the extensive choice allotted to man. If we look into the history of the human race, inhabiting the different parts of the globe, as far as we are acquainted with it, we find, that man appears to be designed by nature to eat of all substances that are capable of nourishing him: fruits, grains, roots, herbs, flesh, fish, reptiles, and fowls, all contribute to his sustenance. He can even subsist on every variety of these substances, under every mode of preparation, dried, preserved in salt, hardened in smoke, pickled in vegetable acids, &c.

The Author of Nature has so constructed our organs of digestion, that we can accommodate ourselves to every species of aliment; no kind of food injures us; we are capable of being habituated to every species, and of converting into nutriment almost every production of nature.

When we enquire more minutely into the chemical constitution of the different alimentary materials, which promote the growth, support the strength, and renew the waste of our body, we find that animal substances are not suited to form the whole of our daily food; and that, in fact, if long and extensively used, their stimulating effects at length exhausts and debilitates the system, which it at first invigorated and supported. Those, accordingly, who have lived for any great length of time on a diet composed entirely of animal matter, become oppressed, heavy, and indolent, the tone and excitability of their frame are impaired, they are affected with indigestion, the breathing is hurried on the smallest exercise, the gums become spongy, the breath is fœtid, and the limbs swell. We recognize in this description the approach of scurvy, a disease familiar to sailors, to the inhabitants of besieged towns, and, in general, to all who are wholly deprived of a just proportion of vegetable aliment.

On the other hand, vegetable food being less stimulating is also less nourishing; besides, this kind of aliment is, upon the whole, of more difficult assimilation than the food derived from the animal kingdom. Hence it is, perhaps, that nature has provided a greater extent of digestive organs for animals wholly herbivorous. It is insufficient to raise the human system to all the strength and vigour of which it is susceptible. Flatulency of the stomach, muscular and nervous debility, and a long series of disorders, are not unfrequently the consequences of this too sparing diet. Some Eastern nations, indeed, live almost entirely on vegetable substances; but these, it is remarked, are seldom so robust, so active, or so brave, as men who live on a mixed diet of animal and vegetable food. Few, at least, in the countries of Europe can be sufficiently nourished by vegetable food alone; and even those nations, and individuals, who are said to live exclusively on vegetables, because they do not eat the flesh of animals, generally make use of milk at least, of eggs, and butter and cheese.

Food composed of animal and vegetable materials is, in truth, that which is best suited to the nature and condition of man. The proportions in which these should be used it is not easy to determine, but generally the quantity of vegetables should exceed that of animal food. “On this head,” says Dr. Fothergill, “I have only one short caution to give. Those who think it necessary to pay any attention to their health, at table, should take care that the quantity of bread, of meat, and of pudding, and of greens, should not compose, each of them, a meal, as if some only were thrown in to make weight, but carefully to observe that the sum of, altogether, do not exceed due bounds or incroach upon the first feeling of satiety.”

All the products of the vegetable kingdom, used as aliment, are not equally nutritious. When we contemplate with a chemical eye the nutritive principles contained in vegetable substances, we soon perceive that they are but few in number, namely, starch, gluten, mucilage, jelly, fixed oil, sugar, and acids; and the different vegetable parts of them are nutritious, wholesome, and digestible, according to the nature and proportion of their principles contained in them. The starch and gluten appear the most nutritious, and together with mucilage at the same time, the most abundant ingredients contained in those vegetables from which man derives his subsistence. Hence, from time immemorial, and in all parts of the earth, man has used farinaceous seeds as part of his food, for they contain the above-mentioned materials in the greatest abundance. Of these the most nutritive are the seeds of the _Cerealia_, under which title are commonly comprehended the _Gramineæ_, or _Culminiferous_ plants. Whilst the seeds of the _Gramineæ_ supply the most important part of food furnished by the vegetable kingdom, in almost every part of the world, their leaves and young shoots support that class of animals hence called graminivorous, whose flesh is most generally eaten.

These vegetables are distributed so universally over the face of the earth, and have become to such a degree the object of culture, that they are very generally made into bread, or are employed instead of it; and, upon the whole, it appears that they are nutritive merely in the proportion to the quantity of farinaceous matter contained in them; but this substance exists in different combinations in different cereal and leguminous seeds. It is combined with gluten in wheat, with a saccharine matter in oats, and in many leguminous seeds, such as Harricot beans and pease, and with viscous mucilage in rye and Windsor beans.

Next to the _Cerealia_ and _Leguminosæ_ may be ranged the oily farinaceous seeds, such as almonds, walnuts, filberts, &c. These abound in starch and mucilage. The use of chocolate, which is prepared from the chocolate nut, growing in the West Indies, ground into a paste, with or without sugar, is in itself a nutritious substance, and to those with whom it agrees, it may be considered as a wholesome nutritious aliment. Yet the vegetable farina, in this state of existence, though highly nutritious, and to many palates very agreeable, is more difficult of digestion, and does not, upon the whole, afford a very wholesome alimentary substance. When too freely used, those kinds of seeds are sure to disagree, more especially if from age the oil has become rancid. They must be considered rather as a delicacy than as fitted to form a portion of our daily food, and with some particular stomachs they never agree.

Of the alimentary farinaceous roots, the potatoe, boiled or roasted, is one of the most useful, and perhaps after the _Cerealia_, one of the most wholesome and most nutritious vegetables in common use; its nourishing powers, there can be no doubt, depend upon the amylaceous fecula of which it is chiefly composed. The Jerusalem artichoke deserves likewise to be noticed here, as being a highly alimentary root, chiefly composed of farinaceous matter. Of the fruits rich in farinaceous and mucilaginous matter, few are indigenous. The chesnut, when roasted, affords an alimentary food, but in the East and West Indies the bread fruit, bananas, and the fruit of the plantain tree, are the substitutes for bread.

Scarcely any of the various alimentary substances employed by man are consumed in the raw and crude state in which they are presented to us by nature. Almost all of them are previously subjected to some kind of preparation, or change, by which for the most part they are rendered more wholesome and more digestible, and sometimes more nutritive. Accordingly, the observations we have made on the properties of different vegetable aliments, are to be considered as applied to them in the state in which they are commonly used among us.

When in the preparation of bread a baking heat is applied to the flour dough, a complete change is produced in the constitution of the mass. The new substance of bread differs materially from flour, it no longer forms a tenacious mass with water, nor can starch and gluten be any more separated from it.

By the application of heat to vegetables the more volatile and watery parts are in some cases dissipated. The different principles, according to their peculiar properties, are extracted, softened, dissolved, or coagulated; but most commonly they are changed into new combinations, so as to be no longer distinguishable by the forms and chemical properties which they originally possessed.

In like manner the leguminous seeds, and farinaceous roots are greatly altered by the chemical action of heat. The raw potatoe is ill-flavoured, extremely indigestible, and even unwholesome. By roasting, or boiling, it becomes farinaceous, sweet, and agreeable to the taste, wholesome, digestible, and highly nutritious. Little is lost, and nothing is added to the potatoe by this process, yet its properties are greatly changed; its principles, in short, have suffered very remarkable chemical changes.

Even in the simple boiling of the various leguminous seeds, pot-herbs, and esculent roots, the effect does not seem confined to the mere softening of the fibres, the solution of some, and coagulation of other of their juices and principles; not only their texture, but their flavour, and other sensible qualities have undergone a change, by which their alimentary properties have been improved; the farinaceous matter by boiling is rendered soluble, the vegetable fibre softened. Saccharine matter is often formed, mucilage and jelly extracted and combined, and the product is rendered more palatable, wholesome, and nourishing. And, although every country has its own favourite articles of food, and modes of preparing them, and there is perhaps no subject in regard to which local prejudices are so strong, yet there can be no reason why the farinaceous matter of cereal seeds should always be consumed in the state of bread; many of them are not less agreeable, and not less wholesome in other forms of food.

In Scotland nine-tenths of those in the more humble walks of life live upon barleybroth, and there are not more healthy people to be found any where.—_Cullen’s Materia Medica_, v. I. p. 287.

It is chiefly to save the trouble of dressing any other kind of food, and that bread, from its portability and convenience of always being ready, has become the principal sustenance, but it is far from being the most economical method of using farinaceous grain. There can be no doubt that the same quantity of farinaceous matter made into bread might, in other forms, be used to a much greater advantage; for the great art of preparing good and wholesome food is to convert the alimentary matter into such a substance as to fill up the stomach and alimentary canal without overcharging it with more nutritive matter than is requisite for the support of the animal, and this may be done either by bread, or by converting the mealy substance of which it is composed into other forms, of which there is a great variety.

Persons who have travelled much on the continent are well aware that our neighbours have the art of throwing much more variety and gratification of the palate into the article of subsistence which has been emphatically called the staff of life, than we possess. The French and Germans convert the farinaceous flour of vegetables into a variety of excellent articles of food, and not serving, like our own, as a mere companion to pair off with so many mouthfuls of meat.

In speaking thus of the use of bread, I do not mean to deny that bread is highly alimentary, its nourishing powers are undoubtedly very great.

The finest bread, says an eminent physician (Dr. Buchan), is not always the best adapted for answering the purposes of nutrition. Household bread, which is made by grinding the whole grain, and only separating the coarse bran, is, without doubt, the most wholesome.

The people of South Britain generally prefer bread made of the finest wheat flour, while those of the Northern countries eat a mixture of flour and oatmeal, or rye bread. The common people of Scotland also eat a mixed bread, but more frequently bread made of oatmeal only.

In Germany the common bread is made of rye. The flour of millet is made in France, Spain, and Italy, into wholesome and nourishing pastry and puddings. The American and West Indian labourer thinks no bread so strengthening as that which is made of Indian corn.

The inhabitants of Westphalia, who are a hardy and robust people, capable of enduring the greatest fatigues, live on a coarse brown rye bread, which still retains the opprobrious name once given to it by a French traveller, “_Bon pour Nicole_—good for his horse Nichol.”

The great advantage of eating pure and genuine bread must be obvious; but bread is often spoiled to please the eye. I have elsewhere[1] shewn, that in the making of bread, more especially in London, various ingredients are occasionally mingled with the dough. The baker is obliged to suit the caprice of his customers, to have his bread light and porous, and of a pure white colour. It is impossible to produce this sort of bread from flour alone, unless it be of the finest quality. The best flour, however, being mostly used by the biscuit bakers and pastry cooks, it is only from the inferior sorts that bread is made; and it becomes necessary, in order to have it of that light and porous quality, and of a fine white, to mix alum with the dough. Without this ingredient the flour used by the London bakers would not yield so white a bread as that sold in this metropolis, and herein consists the fraud, that the baker is enabled by the use of this ingredient to produce, from bad materials, bread that is light, white, and porous, but of which the quality does not correspond to the appearance, and thus to impose upon the public.

Footnote 1:

Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons, 2nd Edit. 1820, p. 130.

In the following pages I have enumerated the methods by which all the different kinds of farinaceous substances are made into good and wholesome bread, and are used in different countries as articles of daily sustenance.

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Art of making Bread.

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HISTORICAL SKETCH

OF

THE ART OF MAKING BREAD.

Nothing appears so easy at first sight, as to grind corn, or other farinaceous substances, to knead the flour with water into dough, and to convert it, by baking, into porous bread. But, simple as these operations may now appear to us, the art of making loaf-bread was by no means one of the earliest among human inventions.

For, however essential this species of food may be considered among us as an article of primary subsistence, it is perfectly certain, that men had long existed in a state of civilization, before bread was known among them.

It is evident that every species of corn must have been originally the spontaneous production of the earth; but as the grain, previous to cultivation, would grow but scantily, its importance as food might long escape observation, and mankind would naturally derive a more obvious, though less nutritive subsistence, from acorns, berries, and other fruits which were within their reach. Ages elapsed ere Ceres, according to the Grecian mythology, descended from heaven to teach mankind the use of agriculture.

In the early ages of society, according to some historians, men were satisfied with parching their corn for immediate use as food. The next advance appears to have been, to pulverize the grain in a mortar or handmill, and to form it, by the addition of water or milk, into a kind of porridge; or to make the bruised grain into dough, which was rendered eatable by baking on embers.

Even after the method of grinding corn into meal, and separating the bran by sifting, had become known, it was long before the art of fermenting the dough, in order to produce bread full of eyes and of a soft consistence, was discovered.

Like most other operations of primary importance, the origin of the art of making bread is lost in the darkness of ages past.

We are, however, certain that the Jews practised this art in the time of Moses; for we find in the Book of Exodus, chap. xii. v. 18, a prohibition to make use of _leavened_, that is, fermented bread, during the celebration of the Passover. But it does not appear that _loaf-bread_ was known to Abraham, for in his history we read frequently of cakes, but not of fermented bread. It is, therefore, very probable, that the art of making fermented bread took its rise in the East, and that the Jews learned it from the Egyptians.

The Greeks attribute the art of making bread to the god Pan.

Bakers were unknown in Rome till the year of the city 850, or about 200 years before the Christian era. The Roman bakers, according to Pliny, came from Greece with the Macedonian army. Before this period, the Romans were often distinguished by the appellation of _eaters of pap_.

At the time of Augustus, there were upwards of 300 baking houses in Rome, almost the whole of which were occupied by Greeks. The bakers enjoyed in ancient Rome great privileges. The public granaries were entrusted to their care; they formed a corporation, or kind of college, from which neither they nor their children were permitted to withdraw. They were exempted from guardianships and public services, which might interfere with their occupation. They were eligible to become Senators; and those who married the daughters of bakers, became members of the college.

From the establishment of bakers in Rome, the art of making loaf, or fermented bread, spread amongst the ancient Gauls; but its progress in the northern countries of Europe was slow, and in some northern districts, the luxury of eating fermented, or loaf-bread, is at this day not in general use. Some of the modern Italians consume the greatest part of their bread-flour in the state of _macaroni_ and _vermicelli_, and in other forms of _polenta_, or soft pudding; and even at present millions of people neither sow nor reap, but content themselves with enjoying the spontaneous productions of the earth.

Bread Corn,

Properly so called, of which loaf-bread is chiefly made among cultivated nations, comprehends the seeds of the whole tribe of (_cerealia_), or gramineous plants; for they all contain a farinaceous substance, of a similar nature, and chiefly composed of starch. Those of the _cerealia_ in common use are the following:

Wheat _Triticum hybernum._
Barley _Hordeum vulgare._
Rye _Secale cereale._

With us, wheat is chiefly employed for the fabrication of bread. It is, in fact, the only grain of which light porous bread can be made; but rye and barley are also used as bread-corn. The farina of the other _cerealia_ afford also a nutritive and wholesome bread; though their flour is not so susceptible of the panary fermentation, it cannot be made into the white texture of the wheaten loaf. The bread formed from them is consequently much inferior to that prepared from wheat. The following seeds are chiefly employed to make a species of bread:

Oats _Avena Sativa._
Maize _Zea Mays._
Rice _Oriza Sativa._
Millet _Panicum milliaceum._

Oats are used in the north of Europe for making a kind of bread, called oatmeal-cake, and particularly by the inhabitants of Scotland. Maize is frequently employed as bread-corn in North America.

Rice nourishes more human beings than all the other seeds together, used as food; and it is by many considered the most nutritive of all sorts of grain. A very ridiculous prejudice has existed with respect to rice, namely, that it is prejudicial to the sight, by causing diseases of the eye; but no authority can warrant this assertion: on the contrary, the opinion of the ablest men (Cullen’s Mat. Med. v. i. p. 229) may be quoted in favour of rice being a very healthy food: and the experience of all Asia and America may be adduced with sufficient weight to have answered this objection, if it had been supported by any thing more than vulgar prejudice, unsupported by facts. This grain is peculiarly calculated to diminish the evils of a scanty harvest, an inconvenience which must occasionally affect all countries, particularly those which are very populous. It is the most fitted of all food to be of use in relieving general distress in a bad season[2], because it comes from a part of the world where provisions are cheap and abundant; it is light, easy of carriage, keeps well for a long time, and contains a great deal of wholesome food within a small compass. Indeed, it has been ascertained that one part of rice contains as much food and useful nourishment as six of wheat.

Footnote 2:

Reports of the Society for bettering the Condition of the Poor, Vol.
I. p. 137.

Next to the _cerealia_, the seeds of _leguminous plants_ may be regarded as substitutes for bread corn. Their ripe seeds afford the greatest quantity of alimentary matter. Their meal has a sweetish taste, but they cannot be made into light and porous bread, without the addition of a portion of wheaten flour. Their meal, however, though it forms but a coarse and indifferent bread, neither very palatable nor very digestible, except by the most robust stomachs, is yet highly nutritive.

It is remarked by Dr. Cullen, that “on certain farms of this country, upon which the leguminous seeds are produced in great abundance, the labouring servants are much fed upon that kind of grain; but if such servants are removed to a farm upon which the _leguminous seeds_ are not in such plenty, and therefore they are fed with the _cerealia_, they soon find a decay of strength; and it is common for servants, in making such removals, to insist on their being provided daily, or weekly, with a certain quantity of the leguminous meal.” We are not, however, to conclude from this observation, that pease-meal bread, is really more nutritive than wheaten bread, or than the meal of the other _cerealia_. We are rather disposed to regard it as an example of the effect of habit.

The _leguminous seeds_ employed in the fabrication of bread, are

Pease _Pisum Sativum._
Beans _Vicia faba._
Kidney Beans _Phaseolus vulgaris._

The whole of this tribe afford a much more agreeable, though not a more nutritive aliment, when their seeds are used green, young, and tender, and simply boiled, than when fully ripened, and their flour baked.

It is remarked, that all the substances of which bread is made, as well as the substitutes for it, when chemically considered, are chiefly composed of one and the same identical material; namely, the farinaceous matter of the seeds, roots, fruits, or other products of vegetables, of different climates and soils; and that _starch_, or the amylaceous fecula, forms the most valuable part of all the materials used for making bread, and its substitutes.

This substance forms by far the most abundant, the most nourishing, and the most easy to be procured aliment, obtainable from the vegetable kingdom.

“Whilst immense tribes of creatures devour the amylaceous fecula in the grain, as nature produces it, man knows how to give it different forms, from the most simple boiling to the most complicated delicacies of the arts of the confectioner and pastry-cook.

“It is singular that man should waste so valuable a substance for the purpose of hair-powder, a kind of custom perhaps ridiculous, in which modern nations imitate, without being aware of it, those people whom they term barbarous, and by which custom they lavish away a portion of the subsistence of a great number of families.”

This nutritive aliment, we find, exists in various combinations, in the roots, seeds, in the stems, and fruits of plants. Many roots abounding in the amylaceous fecula, yields a palatable and highly nutritious aliment.

Hence the potatoe is a substance largely employed as a substitute for bread. Its nutritious qualities are fully ascertained by the experience of all Europe; it makes a considerable portion of the food of the poor; and in Ireland in particular, millions of people exist, who, from sufficient evidence, we are pretty certain live for years together almost wholly on this root and water, without any other seasoning than a little salt. It contains much amylaceous fecula, and when mixed with wheaten flour, may be formed into good and palatable bread. Other substances, besides the grains before mentioned, are in different parts of the world substituted for bread. These are the following:

The Bread-Fruit.

The Bread-fruit Tree (_Artocarpus incisa_) affords the inhabitants of the South Pacific Ocean a substance resembling bread. They only climb the tree to gather the fruit, which is of a round shape, from five to six inches in diameter; it grows on boughs like apples, and, when quite ripe, is of a yellowish colour. The bread-fruit has a tough reticulated rind; there is neither seed nor stone in the inside of it. The eatable part, which lies between the skin and the core, is as white as snow, and of the consistence of new bread. The fruit is roasted on embers, or baked in an oven, which scorches the rind and turns it black; this is rasped off, and there remains a thin white crust, while the inside is soft and white, like crumbs of fine loaf-bread. It is eaten new, for if it is kept longer than twenty-four hours, it becomes harsh and unpalatable. It is also boiled, by which means the interior is rendered white, like a boiled potatoe. They make three dishes of it, by putting either water or the milk of the cocoa-nut to it, then beating it into a paste with a stone pestle, and afterwards mixing it with banana paste, which has been suffered to become sour.

The bread-fruit remains in season eight months in the year, during which time the natives eat no other sort of food of the bread kind; and the deficiency of the other four months of the year, is made up chiefly with cocoa-nuts, bananas, plantains, bread nuts (_brosimum alicastrum_), and other farinaceous fruits.

Sago Bread.

The Sago-Tree (_Cycas Circinalis_), which grows spontaneously in the East Indies, and particularly on the Coast of Malabar, furnishes to numerous Indian tribes their bread. In the Islands of Banda and Amboyna, they saw the body of the tree into small pieces, and, after bruising and beating them in a mortar, pour water upon the fragments; this is left for some hours undisturbed, to suffer the pithy farinaceous matter to subside. The water is then poured off, and the meal, being properly dried, is formed into cakes, or fermented and made into bread, which, it is said, eats nearly as well as wheaten bread.

The Hottentots make a kind of bread of another species of sago-tree (_Cycas Resoluta_). The pith, or medulla, which abounds in the trunk of this little palm, is collected and tied up in dressed calf’s or sheep’s skin, and then buried in the ground for several weeks, which renders it mellow and tender. It is then kneaded with water into dough, and made into small loaves or cakes, which are baked under embers. Other Hottentots, not quite so nice, merely dry and roast the farinaceous pith, and afterwards make it into a kind of frumety or porridge.

SAGO.

The same meal, or medulla, of the sago-tree, reduced into grain, by passing it whilst still moist through a kind of sieve, produces the _sago_ of commerce, which receives its brown colour by being heated on hot stones.

Casava Bread.

In the Caribbee Islands they make bread of a very poisonous root (_Jatropa Maniat_), rendered wholesome by the extraction of its acrid juice, which the Indians use for poisoning their arrows. A tea-spoonful of the juice is sufficient to poison a man.

The root of the maniat, after being crashed, scraped clean, and grated in a tub, is enclosed in a sack of rushes, of very loose texture, which is suspended upon a stick placed upon two wooden forks. To the bottom of this sack a heavy vessel is suspended, which, by drawing the sack, presses the grated root and receives the juice that flows out of it. When the starch is well exhausted of its juice, it is exposed to smoke in order to dry it; and when well dried it is passed through a sieve. In this state it is termed Casava. It is baked into cakes, by spreading it on hot plates of iron or earth, turning it on both sides, in order to give it a good reddish colour.

TAPIOCA.

The article of commerce, called _tapioca_, is the finest part of the farinaceous pith of the casava. It is separately collected and formed into small tears, by straining the mass while still moist, to form it into small irregular lumps.

Plantain Bread.

The Plantain Tree (_Musa Paradisiaca_), which is a native of the East Indies and other parts of the Asiatic Continent, furnishes the inhabitants with a species of bread. The fruit of the plantain-tree is about a foot long, and from an inch and a half to two inches in diameter. It is at first green, but when ripe of a pale yellow. It has a tough skin, and within is a soft pulp of a sweet flavour. The fruit is generally cut before it is ripe; the green skin is peeled off, and the heart is roasted in a clear coal fire for a few minutes, and frequently turned; it is then scraped and served up as bread. This tree is cultivated on an extensive scale in Jamaica. Without this fruit, Dr. Wright says, the Islands would be scarcely inhabitable, as no species of provisions could supply its place. Even flour and bread itself would be less agreeable to the labouring Negro.

Banana Bread.

The fruit of the Banana Tree (_Musa Sapientum_), differs from the preceding, being shorter, straighter, and rounder. It is about four or five inches long, of the shape of a cucumber, and of a highly grateful flavour. Bananas grow in bunches that weigh twelve pounds and upwards. This fruit yields a softer pulp than the plantain-tree, and of a more luscious taste. It is never eaten green, but when ripe is a very pleasant food, either raw or fried in slices like fritters. It is relished by all ranks of people in the West Indies. When the natives of the West Indies undertake a voyage, they take the ripe fruit of the banana and make provisions of the paste; and, having squeezed it through a sieve, form the mass into loaves, which are dried in the sun or baked on hot ashes, after being previously wrapped up in leaves.

Bread of Dried Fish.

The Laplanders, who have no corn of their own, make a kind of bread of the inner soft bark of a pine tree, either mixed with the coarsest barley meal, or with dried fish beaten into powder. The bark is collected when the sap is rising, it is afterwards dried in the sun, or over a slow fire, and then mixed with the coarsest barley meal, or dried fish beaten into powder. The poorer people grind the chaff, and even some of the straw along with the barley.

Another kind of bread is made of dried fish and the root of the water dragon (_Calla palustris_), the root is taken up in the spring, before the leaves shoot out. It is dried, pounded, and boiled, till it becomes thick, like flummery, and after standing three or four days to lose its bitterness it is mixed with the powder of dried fish and the inner bark of the pine tree, and then made into a stiff paste, and baked over embers.

Bread made of Moss.

Some species of the tribe of Lichen, contain a considerable portion of starch, as the _Lichen Rangiferinus_, or rein-deer moss, which affords food to the stags and other fallow cattle of the North of Europe. The Icelanders form the lichen islandicus into bread, which is found to be extremely nutritious. The moss is collected in the summer, and, when dry, ground into powder, of which bread and gruel, or pottage, are made. It is sometimes also put whole into broth, or is boiled in whey, till it be converted into a jelly. In general, it is either previously steeped for some hours in warm water, or the water of the first boiling is rejected, in order to remove a part of the bitter extractive matter, which, if left, produces a disagreeable taste, and is apt to prove purgative.

Bread made of Earth.

The strangest substitute for bread that has ever been employed, is a sort of white earth. The poor in the Lordship of Moscoa in Upper Lusania, have been frequently compelled to make use of this earth as a substitute for bread.

The earth is dug out of a pit where saltpetre had formerly been worked; when exposed to the rays of the sun it splits and cracks, and small globules issue from it like meal, which ferments when mixed with flour. On this earth, baked into bread, many persons have subsisted a considerable time. A similar earth is met with near Genomu, in Catalonia.

In the western parts of Luisania too, the inhabitants have a most extraordinary custom of eating a white earth, mixed with clay and salt.

The rowers also, who ply on the river Mississippi, frequently drink large quantities of muddy water, which cannot fail to leave in the stomach a considerable quantity of earth. But it cannot be doubted, that a large quantity of earthy substances taken into the stomach would prove deleterious to health.

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Analysis of Bread Flour.

On examining bread corn, for instance wheat, we perceive an outside coating, which after the grain has been soaked in water, may readily be peeled off. This forms the bran of the flour. Immediately under it, is that part of the grain which affords the coarsest flour, it is soft to the touch, and not easily reduced to an impalpable powder, and of a sweetish taste. This constitutes about one half of the grain. Underneath this substance lies what is called by millers, the kernel or heart of the wheat, namely, a hard mealy substance, almost transparent. This part of the grain is capable of being speedily reduced to an impalpable powder, it ferments more readily than the outer layers, and it is this which produces the finest and best kind of wheaten flour. Such is the mechanical constitution of the grain. When chemically examined we find that the flour of wheat, rye, and barley, is composed of three ingredients, or immediate constituent parts, which may be separated by simple processes, viz. starch, gluten, and saccharine mucilage. The proportion of these differ materially in different kinds of corn. The method of separating them is as follows:

Make any quantity of wheaten flour into a stiff paste with cold water, and let it be kneaded and wrought in the hands under water; or put the flour into a coarse linen bag, and knead it between the hands whilst a small rill of cold water is suffered to pass over it. The water will carry away the starch in the form of a white powder, and the dough become more and more elastic, in proportion as the water carries off the starch; continue kneading the mass till the water runs off from the kneaded dough colourless. It will also be observed, that in proportion as the water carries off the starch, the paste in the bag assumes a more grey colour, less brilliant, as it were semi-transparent, and of a softer consistence, but, at the same time, more tenaceous, more viscid, more gluey, and more elastic.

Thus the flour is separated into three substances, by a method incapable of decomposing or altering any of its immediate constituent parts. The starch is precipitated in a white powder at the bottom of the water, from which it may readily be separated by suffering it to subside, and the supernatant liquid, contains in solution the saccharine mucilage; this may be obtained in the form of a syrup, by evaporating slowly in a warm place the clear decanted fluid; and the third substance, the gluten, remains in the bag, in the state of a soft, cohesive, and elastic substance.

In a similar manner the analysis of any species of bread corn may be effected.

QUANTITY OF FLOUR OBTAINABLE FROM VARIOUS KINDS OF CEREAL AND LEGUMINOUS
SEEDS EMPLOYED IN THE FABRICATION OF BREAD, AND DIFFERENT KINDS OF
FLOUR MANUFACTURED FROM WHEAT.

The Board of Agriculture, in order to ascertain what each of the various sorts of grain employed as substitutes for bread-corn would produce, when ground into flour, with only the broad bran taken out, caused a bushel of each of the undermentioned sorts of seeds to be ground for their inspection: the weight of the grain, as well as the bran and the flour, was as follows:

Weight Weight

Weighed. of Flour. of Bran.

_One Bushel of_ _lb._ _lb._ _lb._
_oz._ _oz._

Barley 46 38 10½ 5 10½

Buckwheat 46¼ 38 9 5 5

Rye 54 43 0 9 5½

Maize 53 44 0 8 10½

Rice 61¼ 60 5 0 0

Oats 38¼ 23 5 13 10½

Beans 57¾ 43 5½ 12 5

Pease 61¾ 47 0 12 5

A bushel of wheat, upon an average, weighs sixty-one pounds; when ground, the meal weighs 60¾ lbs.; this on being dressed, produces 46¾ lbs. of flour of the sort called _seconds_, which alone is used for the making of bread in London, and throughout the greater part of this country; and of pollard and bran 12¾ lbs., which quantity, when bolted, produces 3 lbs. of fine flour; this when sifted produces in good second flour 1¼ lb.

lbs.

The whole quantity of 48
bread-flour obtained from
the bushel of wheat, weighs

lbs.

Fine pollard 4¼

Coarse pollard 4 11

Bran 2¾

—

The whole together 59

To which add the loss of 2
weight in manufacturing the
bushel of wheat

—

Produces the original weight 61

REASON WHY OATS, PEASE, BEANS, RICE, MAIZE, MILLET, BUCKWHEAT, AND OTHER
NUTRITIVE GRAINS CANNOT BE MADE INTO LIGHT AND POROUS BREAD.

Every person is acquainted with the difference there is between light well fermented bread, and that which is sodden, heavy, and badly risen, and the decided preference given to the former over the latter, as the most palatable, and easy of digestion.

The only substances for making _loaf bread_, by which term is meant, bread which is light, white, and porous, is the flour of wheat; and it is to the larger quantity of gluten, that wheat flour owes the property of being converted into loaf-bread. The average quantity of gluten contained in wheat flour, amounts to about one-fifth of the whole weight of the meal; but it varies in quantity in different kinds of wheat, according to the soil and season in which the corn has been reared, culture, and various other circumstances. Wheat kept in damp storehouses affords scarcely any gluten, and hence, in proportion as the flour of wheat is altered and deteriorated, which happens, as it is known, when it is kept too much compressed, without being occasionally stirred up and aired in hot and close granaries; in a word, as it undergoes a chemical change, its property of making good bread is diminished; and chemical analysis shows the quantity of gluten has become lessened under such circumstances; and when it is greatly diminished the meal forms no longer a tenaceous ductile dough. The spoiled flour produces a kind of bread which is heavy, harsh, and difficult of digestion.

The greater the proportion of gluten, the easier the panification of bread-flour is effected, and the better is the bread. The wheat of the South of Europe generally contains a larger quantity of gluten, and is therefore more excellent for the manufacture of Maccaroni, Vermicelli, and other alimentary substances, requiring a glutenous paste.

Sir H. Davy found the flour of the wheat of this country to consist of from twenty to twenty-four per cent. of gluten. Barley contains six, and rye five per cent. of gluten.

We may now understand why potatoes, rice, beans, pease, buckwheat, millet, oats, and other nutritive cereal grains, abounding in starch, cannot be made into light and porous bread, although they are well calculated for being made into wholesome puddings, and why they only form crude, heavy, insipid cakes, when made into dough and baked, and not light porous loaf-bread.

In further confirmation of this statement it may be remarked, that if gluten of wheat, or only a portion of wheaten flour be incorporated by kneading with the before-named kinds of flour, a fermentable cohesive paste is produced, from which perfect bread may be made.

THEORY OF THE PANIFICATION OF BREAD FLOUR.

Bread, when chemically examined, is very different from flour; it no longer forms with water a tenaceous ductile mass, nor can starch, gluten, and saccharine mucilage be separated from it.

The chemical changes that take place in the panification of bread-flour, are by no means well understood. The saccharine mucilage, it appears, commences the fermentative chemical action that takes place in the dough, for without this substance, a mixture of flour, yeast, and water, cannot be made into true bread. The fermenting process when once commenced, is kept up by the gluten, forming the body of the paste through which the fecula and saccharine matter are diffused; and when the slight fermentation which it suffers, from changes in the saccharine matter, and supported by the presence of the gluten, has commenced, the paste becomes spongy and porous, from the disengagement of carbonic acid gas, while it still retains in some measure its elasticity; hence the lightness and porosity of well-baked wheaten bread; and hence bread, possessing these qualities, cannot be prepared from the flour of oats, barley, rye, or rice, or from any of the nutritive roots, as in all of these the quantity of gluten is considerably less, or entirely wanting, and no gluey elastic dough can be formed. The starch, which was merely diffused through the gluey dough, combines, during the baking, with a portion of water, into a stiff jelly, which renders the bread more digestible, and the gluten wholly disappears. A portion of carbonic acid gas, which becomes disengaged during the fermenting process, enlarges the bulk of the dough, which is thus rendered light, porous, and full of eyes, or cavities, in consequence of the extraction of the air bubbles, in the viscid glutenous matter; and the porosity of the bread is in proportion to the extent to which the rising of the dough is suffered to proceed.

Some chemists persuade themselves that the fermentation of the flour dough differs materially from the fermentation of saccharine substances; namely, that the vinous, acetous, and putrefactive stages of the fermenting process take place simultaneously in the dough. They imagine the vinous fermentation to take place in the saccharine mucilage, the acetous in the starch, and the putrefactive in the gluten at the same time, and from the modification of each by the others, they consider that peculiar action to originate which converts paste into bread. Against this opinion, however, the following objections may be urged. In the first place, the quantity of saccharine mucilage is so extremely small as to produce no sensible effect alone on the whole mass, and what little there is probably passes speedily into the acetous fermentation. Secondly, the temperature that is required for bread-making is considerably lower than that at which starch dissolves in water, and where this is the case no alteration will take place, even in a long course of time: this is clearly shown by the usual process of starch-making, in which the bruised wheat is fermented for several days in large vats, in order to destroy the gluten, after which the starch is procured by simple deposition from the washings of the residue; and thirdly, no vestige whatever of the products evolved during the putrefactive fermentation of gluten, can be traced in any stage of the panification of bread flour.

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Unleavened Bread.

Bread prepared by baking from the meal of farinaceous seeds kneaded with water into a dough and baked, is divided into three sorts, namely;—1. Unleavened bread; 2. Leavened bread; and, 3. Bread made with yeast.

Unleavened bread contains all the component parts of the flour but little altered. The meal is simply mixed with water, and baked into cakes. It is heavy, dry, friable, and not porous. The oatmeal bread of Scotland, is unleavened bread; as also sea biscuit, and all other kinds of biscuit.

The bread that is eaten by the Jews during the passover is unleavened. The usage of which was introduced in commemoration of their hasty departure from Egypt, [Exodus, chap. 12, v. 14 to 17.] when they had not leisure to bake leavened bread, but took the dough before it was fermented and baked unleavened cakes.

In Roman catholic countries it is still used, and prepared with the finest wheaten flour, moistened with water, and pressed between two plates, graven like wafer moulds, being first rubbed with wax to prevent the paste from sticking, and when dry it is used. Unleavened bread is hardly less nutritious than loaf or fermented bread, but it is generally speaking neither so wholesome nor so digestible.

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To make Oatmeal Cakes.

To a peck of oatmeal add a few table-spoonsful of salt; knead the mixture into a stiff paste, with warm water, roll it out into thin cakes, and bake it in an oven or on embers.

In some cottages oatmeal bread undergoes a partial fermentation, whereby it is rendered lighter; but the generality of the people in the more humble walks of life, where oatmeal bread is eaten, merely soften their oatmeal with water, and having added to it a little salt, bake it into cakes. To strangers oatmeal bread has a dry, harsh, unpleasant taste, but the cottagers of Scotland, in particular, most commonly prefer it to wheaten bread.

Mixed Oatmeal and Pease Bread.

To a peck of pease flour, and a like quantity of oatmeal, previously mixed by passing the flour through a sieve, add three or four ounces of salt, knead it into a stiff mass with warm water, roll it out into thin cakes, and bake them in an oven. In some parts of Lancashire and Scotland, this kind of bread is made into flattened rolls, and the cottagers usually bake them in an iron pot.

In Norway they make unleavened bread of oatmeal and barley, which keeps thirty or forty years, and is considered the better for being old, so that at the baptism of a child, bread is sometimes used which has been baked perhaps at the baptism of its great grandfather.

Unleavened Maize Bread.

The bread made of maize flour, which is in common use in North America, is unleavened bread. The maize flour is kneaded with a little salt and water into a stiff mass; which, after being rolled out into thin cakes, is usually baked on a hot broad iron hoe.

Another kind of unleavened _maize cakes_, which is a North American bread, called _Hoe cake_, is made in the following manner.[3]

Take maize, boil it with a small proportion of kidney beans, until it becomes almost a pulp, and bake it over embers into a cake.

Footnote 3:

This and several other of the directions here given, for making
various species of bread, are taken from Edlin’s excellent Treatise on
bread making, a small work, long ago out of print.

Unleavened Bean-Flour Bread.

Take a quarter of a peck of bean-flour and one ounce of salt, mix it into a thick batter with water, pour a sufficient quantity to make a cake into an iron kettle, and bake it over the fire, taking care to turn it frequently.

Unleavened Buckwheat Bread.[4]

Footnote 4:

From the Reports of the Board of Agriculture.

Take a gallon of water, set it over a fire, and when it boils, let a peck of the flour of buckwheat be mixed with it, little by little, and keep the mixture constantly stirred, to prevent any lumps being formed till a thick batter is made. Then add two or three ounces of salt, set it over the fire again, and allow it to boil an hour and a half, pour the proper proportion for a cake into an iron kettle and bake it.

Unleavened Acorn Bread.

Take acorns, fully ripe, deprive them of their covers and beat them into a paste, let them lay in water for a night, and then press the water from them, which deprives the acorns entirely of their astringency. Then dry and powder the mass for use. When wanted, knead it up into a dough with water, and roll it out into thin cakes, which may be baked over embers.

Bread made after this method is by no means disagreeable, and even to this day, it is said to be made use of in some countries.

Sea Biscuit.

The process of biscuit-baking for the British navy is as follows, and it is equally simple and ingenious. The meal, and every other article, being supplied with much certainty and simplicity, large lumps of dough, consisting merely of flour and water, are mixed up together; and as the quantity is so immense as to preclude, by any common process, a possibility of kneading it, a man manages, or, as it is termed, rides a machine, which is called a horse. This machine is a long roller, apparently about four or five inches in diameter, and about seven or eight feet in length. It has a play to a certain extension, by means of a staple in the wall, to which is inserted a kind of eye, making its action like the machine by which they cut chaff for horses. The lump of dough being placed exactly in the centre of a raised platform, the man sits upon the end of the machine, and literally rides up and down throughout its whole circular direction, till the dough is equally indented; and this is repeated till it is sufficiently kneaded; at which times, by the different positions of the lines, large or small circles are described, according as they are near to or distant from the wall.