Sylvester Graham

“ Or can we reasonably expect to find these qualifications in domestics—in those who serve us for hire? Many a female domestic, it is true, can make much better bread than her mistress can. Many a female domestic has an honest and sincere desire to do her duty faithfully; but can she be actuated by those sensibilities and affections which alone can secure that careful attention, that soundness of judgment, that accuracy of operation, without which the best of bread cannot uniformly, if ever, be produced? ”

“ Of all the artificially prepared articles of food which come upon our table, therefore, bread should be that one which, as a general fact, is uniformly preferred by our children and our household,—that one, the absence of which they would notice soonest, and feel the most,—that one which—however they may enjoy for a time the little varieties set before them—they would be most unwilling to dispense with—and which, if they were driven to the necessity, they would prefer to any other dish, as a single article of subsistence. ”

“ Whether, therefore, my voice shall be heard and heeded or not, I will obey the dictates of my sense of duty, and solemnly declare that this subject demands the prompt and earnest attention of every agriculturist and of every friend to the common cause of humanity; for it is most certain, that until the agriculture of our country is conducted in strict accordance with physiological truth, it is not possible for us to realize those physical, and intellectual, and moral, and social, and civil blessings for which the human constitution and our soil and climate are naturally capacitated. ”

“ Nevertheless, it is very certain, that loaf or raised bread can be made so nearly in accordance with the vital laws and interests of our bodies, as scarcely to militate against them in any perceptible or appreciable degree. And when I say this, I mean not merely its effects on the health and longevity of a single individual, but its effects upon the human constitution, through successive generations, for a thousand years or more. ”

“ When my bread is made and brought upon the table, and I see my husband and children eat it and enjoy it, and hear them speak of its excellence, it affords me much satisfaction, and I am glad to know that I have contributed so much to their health and happiness; for, while my bread is so good that they prefer it to anything else upon the table, there is little danger of their indulging, to any injurious extent, in those articles of food which are less favorable to their health. ”

“ For it should ever be remembered that, though our children, while they depend on us for protection, are also properly the subjects of our government, yet as soon as they are capable of appreciating our authority and our influence, they are, like ourselves, moral agents, and ought, in all respects, to be governed and nurtured as such; and therefore it is not enough that we can give them such bread as we think best for them, and compel them to eat it ”

“ The gluten is likewise a very nutrient property, but in loaf bread, it principally serves, by its cohesiveness, like gum elastic, or India rubber, to prevent the gas or air formed by the fermentation of the sugar, from escaping or passing off;—and the gas being thus retained, inflates or puffs up the dough, and makes it porous and light. The bran, with its mucilaginous and other properties, not only adds to the nutritiousness of the bread, but eminently serves to increase its digestibility, and to invigorate the digestive organs, and preserve the general integrity of their functions. ”

“ When therefore the bread is thoroughly baked, let it be taken from the oven and placed on a perfectly clean and sweet shelf, in a perfectly clean and well ventilated pantry. Do not, as you value the character of your bread, put it into a pantry where you set away dishes of cold meat, cold potatoes, and other vegetables, and keep your butter, cheese and various other table provisions—in a pantry which perhaps is seldom thoroughly cleansed with hot water and soap, and where the pure air of heaven seldom if ever has a free circulation. ”

“ It is more wholesome, easier of digestion, and more strengthening than bread made of the finest flour. It must be confessed, that the nutrimentive quality is contained in the fine flour; yet, in the branny part is contained the opening and digestive quality; and there is as great a necessity for the one as the other, for the support of health: that which is accounted the worst is as good and beneficial to nature as the best; for when the finest flour is separated from the coarsest and branny parts, neither the one nor the other has the true operations of the wheat meal. ”

“ The truth is, the quality of bread is a matter of too little consideration; and therefore too little care is given to the making of it. Moreover, the sense of taste is so easily vitiated, that we can very easily become reconciled to the most offensive gustatory qualities, and even learn to love them; and it is a very common thing to find families so accustomed to sour bread, that they have no perception of its acid quality. ”

“ If the digestive organs of man were designed to receive nothing but digestible and nutrient substances, they would have been constructed and arranged very differently from what they are. As we have already seen, everything which nature provides for our sustenance, consists of certain proportions of nutritious and innutritious matter; and a due proportion of innutritious matter in our food is as essential to the health and functional integrity of our alimentary organs, as a due proportion of nutritious matter is to the sustenance of the body. ”

“ In all probability, as we have already seen, the first generations of our species, who became acquainted with the art of making bread, continued for many centuries to employ all the substance of the grain, which they coarsely mashed in their rude mortars or mills. And even since 59mankind began, by artificial means, to separate the bran from the flour, and to make bread from the latter, the more close and discerning observers among physicians and philanthropists, have perceived and asserted, that bread made of fine flour is decidedly less wholesome than that made of the unbolted wheat meal. ”

“ Dear Sir:—The subject of your Lecture to Young Men is one of immense importance, and demands the profound attention of every friend of man. It is vain longer to shuffle it off, when those whose opportunities best qualify them to give an opinion, do not hesitate to say that solitary vice is rapidly gaining ground among us. It is a subject which must be met.
In this view, I rejoice to find that an increasing demand for your little work has justified the publication of a second edition. I rejoice, especially, to see such sound principles in physiology inculcated and warmly enforced. ”

“ Hence bakers are able to make a larger loaf of bread out of a pound of southern flour than they can out of a pound of western flour; and consequently some of them have endeavored to make their customers believe that the southern flour is the most profitable. It certainly is the most profitable for the baker; but it is not the most profitable for the consumer.
The next thing indispensably necessary to the making of good bread, is good lively sweet yeast, or leaven, to produce what is called the panary, or more properly, the vinous fermentation of the saccharine matter, or sugar. ”

“ If a lady can ever find a good excuse for having poor bread, she certainly can find none, except perhaps extreme poverty, for setting her poor bread on the table the second time. Yet, too generally, women seem to think that, as a matter of course, if they, by carelessness or any other means, have been so unlucky as to make a batch of poor bread, their family and friends must share their misfortune, and help them eat it up ”

“ The farmer will continue to be most eager to increase the number of his acres, and to extort from those acres the greatest amount of produce, with the least expense of tillage, and with little or no regard to the quality of that produce in relation to the physiological interests of man; while the people generally, are contented to gratify their depraved appetites on whatever comes before them, without pausing to inquire whether their indulgences are adapted to preserve or to destroy their health and life. ”

“ And God has constructed man in strict accordance with this general economy of nature. He has organized and endowed the human body with reference to the condition and qualities of those substances in nature, which He designed for the food of man. And consequently, while man obeys the laws of constitution and relation which should govern him in regard to his food, he preserves the health and integrity of his alimentary organs, and through them of his whole nature ”

“ If all things happen to be as they should be, it is well; if not, they must answer for the present. If the yeast happens to be lively and sweet, very lucky. If otherwise, still it must be used. If the dough rises well and is got into the oven before it becomes sour, very fortunate; if not, why, “nobody can avoid mistakes—and bread will sometimes be poor in spite of the greatest care;”—and if a batch of miserable bread is the result of such an operation, then all that remains to be done is to eat it up as soon as possible, and hope for better the next time. ”

“ I have said that recently ground meal makes far sweeter and richer bread, than that which has been ground a considerable time; but as it is not convenient for many families to send to a mill as often as they would like to have fresh meal, they are obliged generally to use staler meal or flour than they would choose. Yet every family might easily be furnished with a modern patent hand-mill, constructed after the plan of a coffee mill, with which they could at all times, with great ease, grind their wheat, and rice, and corn, as they want it, for bread and other purposes. ”

“ Here let it be understood, that the starch of the meal is of such a nature that, by a delicate process peculiar to itself, it becomes changed into sugar or saccharine matter; and when the fluid used in mixing the dough is of a proper temperature, and the dough is properly mixed and kneaded, this process, to some small extent, takes place, and a small portion of the starch is actually converted into sugar, and thereby increases the sweetness of the bread. ”

“ It is incontestibly true, that if two portions of the same kind of wheat meal be taken and made, the one into unleavened and the other into leavened bread, and both be eaten warm from the oven, the leavened bread will prove much more oppressive and difficult to manage in the stomach than the unleavened. But aside from the changes that are produced by the process of fermentation, there are many other considerations why unleavened bread of a proper quality and age, is better 29adapted to sustain the alimentary organs and general constitution of man, in their highest and best condition. ”

“ Again, if man subsisted wholly on uncooked food, he would not only be preserved from improper concentrations, but also from pernicious combinations of alimentary substances. The alimentary organs of man, like those of the horse, ox, sheep, dog, cat, and most or all other animals of the higher orders, if not in fact, of all other animals without limitation, possess the vital capability of so accommodating themselves to emergencies, that they can be made to digest almost every vegetable and animal substance in nature ”

“ Van Winkle was undoubtedly correct. If anything like the care were given to bread-making that its real importance demands, a loaf of poor bread would rarely be met with. Indeed, if the same degree of care were given to bread-making, that is devoted to the making of cakes and pastry, we should far more generally be blessed with good bread.
Who does not know, that as soon as girls are old enough to go into company and to give parties, they begin to notice with great interest the qualities of the different kinds of cake and pastry which they meet with ”

“ Ancient Roman bread. Public bakers. Use of bad flour. Adulterations. Poisonous agents used to disguise them.
Among the materials used for making bread in our country—and, in fact, of all the known productions of the vegetable kingdom in any country, wheat is decidedly the best; and it is a remarkable fact, that wheat comes nearer to man than perhaps any other plant, in its power of becoming adapted to different climates, over a wide extent of the earth’s surface, so that it may almost be said that wherever the human species can flourish, there wheat can be cultivated. ”

“ The best bread-makers I have ever known, watch over their bread troughs while their dough is rising, and over their ovens while it is baking, with about as much care and attention as a mother watches over the cradle of her sick child.
Dough made of wheat meal requires a hotter oven than that made of fine flour; and it needs to remain in the oven longer. Indeed, it is a general fault of bread of every description, made in this country, 98that it is not sufficiently baked. Multitudes eat their bread hot and smoking from the oven in a half-cooked state ”

“ Thus in a hundred pounds of potatoes, there are about twenty-five pounds of nourishing matter; while in a 19hundred pounds of good wheat there are about eighty pounds of nourishing matter. There are a few products of the vegetable kingdom which are still higher in the scale of nutriment, than wheat; and on the other hand there is a boundless variety ranging below wheat, extending down to three or four per cent. of nourishment. But nature, without the aid of human art, produces nothing for the alimentary use of man which is purely a concentrated nutrient substance. ”

“ Thousands of families, in the poorer and middling classes of society, are suffering from their unwise attempts to live in the style of those persons whose means are far greater than their own. The author has endeavored to convince them—in a brief manner—that a very few things only, are really indispensable to physical and even intellectual comfort and happiness—and that both these are within the reach of all, even in times like the present, would they be content to live in a manner at once rational, simple and healthful. ”

“ A careful and extensive observation for a few years, would convince every intelligent mind that there is a far more intimate relation between the quality of the bread and the moral character of a family, than is generally supposed. ”

“ The most extended sense of the word, however, according to general usage, comprehends all farinaceous vegetable substances which enter into the diet of man; 10such as the farinaceous seeds or grain, nuts, fruit, roots, &c. And in this extended sense, Bread, in some form or other, has been the principal article in the diet of mankind, from the earliest generations of the human race, to the present time; except among the few, small and scattered tribes, which have, perhaps, ever since the days of Noah, in different parts of the earth, subsisted mainly on animal food. ”

“ Whatever may be the material, therefore, from which bread is made, when the artificial preparation is of that simple character which leaves the proportions of 25nutritious and innutritious properties, as nature combined them, and effects little change in the nutritious principles, and retains the natural requisition for the function of the teeth, and thus secures the proper chewing of the food and the mixing of it with the fluids of the mouth, and swallowing of it slowly, the artificial process militates very little, if at all, against any of the physiological or vital interests of the body. ”