George Frederick Zimmer

“ It has been objected that as English wheat contains a large proportion of starch, and as starch is admittedly destitute of flavour, there is no reason why flour milled from English wheat should possess a sweeter flavour than any other starchy wheat flour. Experience, however, has amply proved that well-ripened English wheat produces bread with an agreeable flavour, though it does not follow that all English wheat is under all conditions capable of baking bread of the highest quality. ”

“ Nine-tenths, or perhaps ninety-nine hundredths, of all the flour consumed in Great Britain is made in roller mills, that is, mills in which the wheat is broken and floured by means of rollers, some grooved in varying degrees of fineness, some smooth, their work being preceded Roller milling. and supplemented by a wide range of other machinery. All roller mills worthy of the name are completely automatic, that is to say, from the time the raw material enters the mill warehouse till it is sacked, either in the shape of finished flour or of offals, it is touched by no human hand. ”

“ The ancient Egyptians made a practice of preserving grain in years of plenty against years of scarcity, and probably Joseph only carried out on a large scale an habitual practice. The climate of Egypt being very dry, grain could be stored in pits for a long time without sensible loss of quality. The silo pit, as it has been termed, has been a favourite way of storing grain from time immemorial in all oriental lands. In Turkey and Persia usurers used to buy up wheat or barley when comparatively cheap, and store it in hidden pits against seasons of dearth. ”

“ History.—Bread-baking, or at any rate the preparation of cakes from flour or parched grain by means of heat, is one of the most ancient of human arts. At Wangen and Robenhausen have been found the calcined remains of cakes made from coarsely-ground grain in Swiss lake-dwellings that date back to the Stone Age. The cakes were made of different kinds of grain, barley and one-grained wheat (Triticum monococcum) being among the ingredients. ”

“ Machine Bakeries.—Bread-baking, though one of the most important of human industries, was long carried out in a most primitive manner, and machinery is still practically unknown in the bulk of British bakehouses. The reasons for this apparently anomalous condition of things are not very far to seek. Bread, unlike biscuits, is a food quite unfitted for long storage, and must be consumed within a comparatively short time of being drawn from the oven. Hence the bread-baker’s output is necessarily limited to a greater or lesser degree. ”

“ The merchant’s risk is thereby lessened to a certain extent. When his wheat has been brought into a British port, to send it farther afield means extra expense. But wheat in an American or Argentine elevator may be ordered wherever the best price can be obtained for it. Options or “futures,” too, have helped to restrict the size of wheat stocks in the United Kingdom. A merchant buys a cargo of wheat on passage for arrival at a definite time, and, lest the market value of grain should have depreciated by the time it arrives, he sells an option against it. ”

“ Flour milled from hard winter wheat in the American winter districts is sometimes nearly as strong as the spring wheat of the North-west. Hungarian flour milled from Theis wheat is also very strong, and so is the flour milled from some south Russian spring wheats. But here again the degree of strength will vary from season to season in a remarkable manner. In the main each land has its own clearly marked type of wheat. While the United States, Canada, Hungary and Russia are each capable of growing strong wheat, Great Britain, France and Germany produce wheat more or less weak. ”

“ That is to say, a baker is not bound to sell a loaf weighing either 4 ℔ or 2; all he has to do, when a customer asks for a loaf, is to put one on the scale, weigh it, and declare the weight. When bread is sold over the counter it is usual for the vendor to cut off and tender a piece of bread to make up any deficiency in the loaf. This is known as the “overweight.” There is little doubt the somewhat misty wording of the bread acts lends itself to a good deal of fraudulent dealing. For instance, when bread is sold over the counter, two loaves may be 5 or 6 oz. ”

“ The evolution of the machine bakery has been slow, and the mechanical operations of the bakehouse were long limited to the mixing of the sponge and the kneading of the dough, but now the work of the bakery engineer extends over almost every operation of bread-making. ”

“ As compared with some other materials the mechanical handling of hot coke does not realize such a striking economy; a hot coke conveyor is expensive to build—on account of the great wear and tear it must be very solidly constructed—and it is costly in upkeep. Still in large gas works the use of machinery for treating glowing coke is economically advisable. Exact calculations are not very easy to make, because while the cost of hand labour in this department of a gas works is accurately known, the efficiency of different hot coke conveyors varies. ”

“ Rolls baked from the best Hungarian flour will not infrequently cut yellow as if eggs had been used in making them up, though nothing more than flour, yeast and water has been employed. Strong flour milled from American or Canadian spring wheat is also yellowish in colour, but the tint is not so deep as with Hungarian flour. On the other hand, there are flours of no great strength, such as those from some Australian wheats, which are apt to look yellow. When the colour of flour is not maintained in the bread, the reason is generally to be found in the baking process employed. ”

“ The wheat berry is a fruit, not a seed, the actual seed being the germ or embryo, a kidney-shaped body which is found at the base of the berry and is connected with the plumule or root. The germ is tough in texture and is in roller milling easily separated from the rest of the berry, being flattened instead of crushed by the rolls and thus readily sifted from the stock. The germ contains a good deal of fatty matter, which, if allowed to remain, would not increase the keeping qualities of the flour. ”

“ To sum up the advantages of national granaries, assuming any sort of disaster to the navy, the possession of a reserve of even six months’ wheat-supply in addition to ordinary stocks would prevent panic prices. On the other hand, the difficulties in the way of forming and administering such a reserve are very great. The world grows no great surplus of wheat, and to form a six months’, much more a twelve months’, stock would be the work of years. The government in buying up the wheat would have to go carefully if they would avoid sending up prices with a rush. ”

“ It must not be forgotten that to effect a clean discharge of the buckets of a vertical elevator, the centrifugal force must be sufficient to overcome the gravity of the material, because the material thrown off the delivery pulley in a horizontal direction will be more rapidly deflected into a parabolic curve the higher its specific gravity. It follows that for a specifically heavy material a greater centrifugal force will be required; that is to say, the elevator will have to be higher speeded than in dealing with a lighter material. ”

“ But as the essential use of mechanical appliances for handling material is to save human labour as far as possible, that hoist will prove the most economical the operation of which is as automatic as possible. The Americans seem to have been pioneers in the construction of furnace hoists, which form the principal elevators of this class, but some excellent examples of the modern furnace hoist are now to be found in Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe. Generally speaking, a furnace hoist consists of an inclined iron bridge girder set at an angle to the upright shaft of the furnace. ”

“ Elevator buckets must be varied according to the nature of the material; for instance, shallow buckets will be found best for a soft and clinging material such as flour, moist sugar, sand, small coal, &c., while for a hard or semi-hard body such as wheat, coal, &c., deeper buckets are preferable. On account of their lower speed, elevators for specifically heavy material require much larger buckets and chains than grain elevators of the same bulk capacity. The most economical form of elevator is fitted with a continuous chain of buckets. ”

“ To preserve grain in good condition it must be kept as much as possible from moisture and heat. New grain when brought into a warehouse has a tendency to sweat, and in this condition will easily heat. If the heating is allowed to continue the quality of the grain suffers. An effectual remedy is to turn out the grain in layers, not too thick, on a floor, and to keep turning it over so as to aerate it thoroughly. Grain can thus be conditioned for storage in silos. There is reason to think that grain in a sound and dry condition can be better stored in bins or dry pits than in the open air ”

“ The distribution of the heat can be well regulated; for instance, it is quite possible to build ovens to be cooler at the back than front, an arrangement which is useful when the bread is withdrawn by means of a hand peel. As the baker has to withdraw each loaf one at a time, it is clear that the withdrawal of the batch through the oven door must take time, probably not less than half-an-hour. Hence the bread drawn from near the oven’s mouth may be underbaked as compared with that at the back of the chamber. ”

“ In factories and warehouses, where the buildings are scattered, it has been installed with excellent results. Being essentially an overhead system, there is a saving of floor space, the ground not being obstructed by trucks or trolleys. The same reasons which render ropeways an economical means of handling such material as coal, ore, stone, slate, &c., between the mine or quarry and the rail or barge, may be adduced in favour of telpherage. For the unloading of railway trucks in a crowded goods-yard it is undoubtedly applicable. ”

“ A continuous worm, being more rigid than a paddle worm, needs fewer supports. The lid of the worm trough should be loose, not screwed on, because in case of an accumulation of feed through a choke in a delivery spout the paddles of a paddle worm would be broken, or a continuous worm stripped, unless the material could throw off the lid and relieve the worm. The ratios of the pitch of the worm to the diameter must be regulated by the nature of the material to be conveyed, and will vary from one-third to a pitch equal to, or even exceeding, the diameter. ”

“ Every link, or second link, carries a bucket, and the whole forms an endless chain of buckets. But these buckets, unlike elevator buckets, which are bolted on to a band or chain, are free to move on the axis on which they are suspended above their centre of gravity. When the conveyor is at work the buckets will always be in an upright position, whether the motion be vertical or horizontal. Each bucket carries its load to the point at which delivery is required, where an adjustable tippling device is ready to catch and tilt the bucket, thus emptying it. ”

“ Since the last decade of the 19th century the storage capacity of British mills has considerably increased. As the number of small mills has diminished the capacity of the bigger ones has increased, and proportionately their warehousing accommodation has been enlarged. At the present time first-hand stocks tend to diminish because a larger proportion of millers’ holdings are in mill granaries and silo houses. The immense preponderance of steamers over sailing vessels in the grain trade has also had the effect of greatly diminishing stocks. ”

“ Here the grain is being brought and paid for; mills driven by horse and ass (or mule) power are busy; men are sieving out the bran from the flour by hand (bolters) ; bakers are moulding loaves on a board; an oven of domelike shape is being charged by means of a shovel (peel) ; and baskets of bread are being weighed on the one hand and carried off on men’s backs on the other. ”

“ One advantage claimed for flour sifters, besides removing the impurities, is that by thoroughly aerating flour they cause it to become more “lively,” in which condition it kneads more readily. It is also quite possible that the air which is thus incorporated with the dough has a stimulating effect on the yeast, causing a more energetic fermentation. A strong argument in favour of dough kneaders is their hygienic aspect. ”

“ In one locality high-class patents may be at a premium; in another the call is for a straight grade, i.e. a flour containing as much of the farinaceous substance as can be won from the wheat berry. In one district there is a sale for rich offals, that is, offals with plenty of flour adhering; in another there may be no demand for such offals. Hence, though the general principles of roller milling as given above hold good all over the country, yet in practice the work of each mill is varied more or less to suit the peculiarities of the local trade. ”

“ Semolina and middlings are more apt to vary in appearance than dunst, because the latter is the product of the later stages of the milling process and represents small particles of the floury kernel tolerably free from such impurities as bran or fluff. The flour producing middlings must not be confounded with the variety of wheat offal which is also known to many English millers as middlings. This consists of husk or bran, more or less comminuted, and with a certain proportion of floury particles adherent. It is only fit for feeding beasts. ”

“ The temperature of the heated air can be regulated by the supply of steam to the heater. This process of washing and conditioning, one of the most important in a flour mill, is characteristically British; millers have to deal with wheats of the most varied nature, and one object of conditioning is to bring hard and harsh, soft and weak wheats as nearly as possible to a common standard of condition before being milled. Wheat is sometimes washed to toughen the bran, an end which can also be attained by damping it from a spraying pipe as it passes along an inclined worm. ”

“ Thus a mill of 10,000 sacks’ capacity per week, which habitually maintains a total stock of 50,000 sacks, might bring up its stock to 150,000 sacks. Such a mill, being a good customer to railways, could get from them the storage it required for little or nothing. But the bulk of the mills have no such advantages. They have little or no spare warehousing room, and are not accustomed to keep any stock, sending their flour out almost as fast as it is milled. ”

“ In the bakery of the Krupp works at Essen, each batch of the so-called Paderborn bread is prepared entirely with leaven from 270 kilos of rye flour (patent quality) , 100 of wheat flour (seconds) , 2 of buckwheat meal, 6 of salt, 5 of leaven, and one litre of oil. In Vienna leaven is never used for making the rolls and small goods for which that city is famous. Viennese bakers use either brewers’ yeast or a ferment, prepared by themselves, of which the basis is an infusion of hops. Brewers’ yeast is added to the ferment, which takes the form of a very slack dough. ”

“ This is why the British corn trade finds it less risky to limit purchases to bare needs, protecting itself by option deals, than to store large quantities which may depreciate and involve their owners in loss. ”