A TREATISE
ON THE ART OF
MAKING GOOD AND WHOLESOME
BREAD
OF
WHEAT, OATS, RYE, BARLEY,
AND
OTHER FARINACEOUS GRAIN
EXHIBITING
THE ALIMENTARY PROPERTIES AND CHEMICAL CONSTITUTION
OF DIFFERENT KINDS OF BREAD CORN, AND OF THE
VARIOUS SUBSTITUTES USED FOR BREAD, IN
DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE WORLD.
[Illustration]
BY FREDRICK ACCUM,
OPERATIVE CHEMIST,
Lecturer on Practical Chemistry, on Mineralogy, and on Chemistry applied
to the Arts and
Manufactures; Member of the Royal Irish Academy; Fellow of the Linnæan
Society;
Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, and of the Royal Society
of Arts of Berlin, &c. &c.
-------
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR THOMAS BOYS, 7, LUDGATE HILL,
By C. Green, Leicester Street, Leicester Square.
1821.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE.
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LONDON,
COMPTON STREET, SOHO.
The object of this Treatise is to exhibit the chemical principles of the
art of making good and wholesome Bread, of Wheat, Oats, Rye, Barley,
Rice, Potatoes, and other farinaceous substances used for this purpose
in different parts of the world.
I have first taken a view of the chemical constitution of the Alimentary
Substances derived from the vegetable kingdom, and have added an
Historical Sketch of the Art of Making Bread. I have elucidated the
chemical constitution of the substances of which Bread is made among
civilized nations, as well as of various nutritive materials, besides
Bread Corn, which are used in different countries as substitutes for
Bread.
I have described the chemical analysis of Bread Flour, its immediate
constituent parts, their proportions in different kinds of grain, and
the method of separating them. I have pointed out the materials more
particularly fitted for the fabrication of Bread; I have explained the
reason why a variety of Alimentary Farinaceous Seeds, in common use,
cannot be made into light and porous loaf-bread, although they are well
calculated, under other forms, of being converted into highly nutritious
food.
I have explained the chemical distinction which exists between bread
made with yeast, as well as with leaven, and bread made without either
of these species of ferment; and, lastly, I have given specific
directions for making the different kinds of Bread prepared from Wheat,
Oats, Rye, Barley, Rice, Maize, Buck-wheat, Potatoes, and other
farinaceous substances, as practised in various countries.
FREDRICK ACCUM.
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CONTENTS.
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PAGE
PREFACE i
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
———————
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
———————
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
———————
LEAVENED BREAD 79
LEAVENED RYE BREAD 83
HUNGARIAN RYE BREAD 85
———————
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.