Baker

“ The baker has come to see that a larger knowledge of the proper conditions of baking and what takes place during the process of bread-baking gives him better bread.
In going through the bakeries of the United States, we find the uppermost question in mind of the master baker is “QUALITY.” His constant endeavor is to make a better lot of bread. The people of the United States are receiving a better loaf of bread each year, as the increase in the sale of baker’s bread testifies. ”

“ There is no other house at Valmont with an oven like ours. When I am a man, if I cannot afford an oven of my own in my kitchen, I shall—”
“What?” asked Marie.
“I shall be a baker,” said Joseph, solemnly. “I always stop before the door of Bernard, the baker, to smell the bread, especially on Saturdays, when he is baking the Sunday cakes and his Reverence’s pie. Ah, how it smells!”
“A baker!” said Pierre with disdain. “Not for worlds! To see Bernard stewing away in his bakehouse till he can scarcely breathe is enough to make one hate the thoughts of cakes. A baker indeed! ”

“ Where this has been done we find great progress, and an even standard of excellence. In America, where the average standard of bread-making is very low, we regard "baker's bread" as a synonym for inferiority; but even here, if we consider the saleratus bread of the great middle west, and all the sour, heavy, uncertain productions of a million homes, the baker bears comparison with the domestic cook. ”

“ And do not the meaning and use of terms familiar in scientific chemistry—such as diastase, cerealin, gluten, and others—only perplex the ordinary journeyman baker, and make him think that the less he has to do with science, the more easily he will get his life “rubbed through.” It is impossible for working bakers to become acquainted with these things while in the bakehouse; and while there are in many towns such valuable institutions as free libraries, mechanics’ institutes, &c., they are not available to the ordinary baker, as his hours are so exceptional. ”

“ Let him but have a little shop, and then a little capital wherewith to lay in his supply of honey, and the thing would be done! He had no recipe, it is true; for he was a baker not by heredity, but by selection. Yet from a wise old baker he had gleaned the knowledge of honey-cake making, and he believed strongly that from the pure fount of his own genius he could draw a formula for the making of lebkuchen so excellent that compared with it all other lebkuchen would seem tasteless. But these were the bright dreams of youth, which age had refused to realize. ”

“ Much has been said lately in our trade journals about introducing scientific chemistry to the journeyman baker in connection with his daily work of making bread. But how many journeyman bakers could we find that even understand the meaning of the word chemistry, without expecting them to understand mysteries to which years of study have been devoted by such men as Liebig, Graham, Dumas, Darwin, Pasteur, and Thoms of Alyth? ”

“ Such bright blue eyes, such plump and rosy cheeks suggested that food was plentiful wherever they lived. There must be a butcher and a baker near, I concluded; and by a happy inspiration I turned back to the depressing garen en band shop, and enquired where the local baker was to be found. ”

“ The191 baker of brown bread not to make white bread and the converse. A baker shall not buy corn to sell it again. A baker shall not sell his flour to cooks for making pastry. Once a month every baker’s bread shall be examined.
If a baker be found to be selling bread under weight he is to be placed on a hurdle with the faulty loaf hanging from his neck and dragged through the “great streets where there may be most people assembled and through the great streets which are the most dirty.” For a second offence he is to be dragged in like manner and set in pillory. ”

“ It grinned at the baker, and the baker stood still and stared back at it.
“Who are you?” said he. “Where did you come from?”
“I came from the oven,” said the imp. “I’ve been in there for a week.”
10“No wonder he is so black,” thought Tina.
“Well, where are you going?” said the baker.
“I am going to the king’s palace,” said the imp.
11“Oho! I’d like to see you,” said the baker.
“Well, see me, then,” said the imp, as he jumped down and ran to the door, shouting, “Hurrah for King Caloric!”
“Come, come quickly! it is the king’s son,” said the maiden, seizing Tina by the hand. ”

“ But he has the pale face of the maker of bread, and that spasmodic action of the nose as though he wanted to sneeze and couldn't, which I have no doubt is a habit contracted by the hard-worked operative in his constant endeavour to keep the fine flour-dust from entering his nostrils. Moreover, the baker is a tender-footed man, and walks with a bent knee and a half-shuffling gait, as though he were picking his steps over hot bricks. ”

“ The Baker is now a pensioner, the Mahons having refused to part with him, even for a tempting price. He spends his summer on the bog in company with a donkey, his old companion; in winter, he occasionally appears at Meets, and goes admirably in a short run—just to show the younger performers how the thing should be done! On such occasions he is pointed out to strangers as that celebrated chaser, the Baker; but the story of the baker’s cart, and his reputed price of thirty shillings, is looked upon as an amusing fiction. ”

“ A baker we take to mean a person who bakes and prepares any farinaceous substance intended for human food. Therefore baking not only includes loaf-bread baking, biscuit baking, fancy-bread baking, but also pastry-making and confectionery. ”

“ As an account of some experiments upon baking Rye Bread, which were made under my immediate care and inspection in the bake-house of the House of Industry at Munich, may perhaps be of use to those who wish to known how good Rye Bread may be prepared; as also to such as are desirous of ascertaining, by similar experiments, what, in any given case, the profits of a baker really are ”

“ Much however depends on the care and ability of the baker: in the country especially, where the baking of dinners is not always considered as a regular article of business, it is rather a hazardous experiment to send a valuable joint to the oven; and more is often wasted and spoiled by the heedless conduct of the parish cook, than would have paid for the boiling or roasting at home. But supposing the oven to be managed with care and judgment, there are many joints which may be baked to great advantage, and will be found but little inferior to roasting. ”

“ But the messenger went on again and he came to the baker's shop. The baker's boy stood at the door, dressed in his best white suit, and holding an empty basket on his arm. He was quite sure that he would be chosen to go to the palace, for his father's bake shop was an important place in the village. They measured their flour carefully, and weighed the loaves so that they might receive the utmost penny for each. They very seldom had any crumbs left for the poor, but they were selling a great deal of bread every day. ”

“ However, what he has learnt in the practice of his art, and what the common custom of the trade has handed down to him, he may use to more or less advantage, according as he has more or less personal skill. In the case of fermentation, which may be described as the very backbone of bread-making, a baker will find plenty to study and to think about, from his first “setting the sponge” until his bread is out of the oven, without perplexing himself over problems about which he can understand little or nothing. ”

“ Stay! this was at the baker's, I think, where I went for some rolls for my master. It was lying beside his oven.'
To the baker's they all went as fast as possible, and they got there but just in time. The baker had in his hand the bit of wood with which he was that instant going to feed his oven.
'Stop, good Mr. Baker!' cried Rosetta, who ran into the baker's shop first; and as he heard 'Stop! stop!' re-echoed by many voices, the baker stopped; and turning to Francisco, Carlo, and Arthur, begged, with a countenance of some surprise, to know why they had desired him to stop. ”

“ On Sunday morning the baker’s cart came with hot pots of beans crested with burnt lumps of pork. We had to learn to eat beans and brown bread.
“I’m sure,” said my aunt when I brought home a five-cent loaf, “that they rise the dough with potatoes; its so light and like dried chips!” For the first time in my life I was surfeited with pastry. I bought several square inches of frosted cake from the baker for five cents, and ate it in place of the substantial food I had lived on in England. ”

“ These bas reliefs are most interesting, as they show the whole history of baking. First there is the purchase of the corn, and payment being made for it; then we see it ground, and sifted to separate the bran. Next a man is buying some flour. Then we see the dough being kneaded by horse-power, the bakers making it into loaves, the baker with his peel baking the loaves, which are afterwards carried in55 paniers to be weighed. Then there are the customers, and the bread being sent out for delivery. ”

“ A baker in France, it must be remembered, is a most necessary functionary in the community, for as everybody has for years bought bread, nobody even knows how to make it at home any more. The whole neighbouring countryside, therefore, you see, was most dependent on the baker, and the baker was gone away to war. ”

“ That it has an appreciable effect in improving the appearance of the bread is unquestionable, and it may actually improve the quality of bread made from inferior flour.
One of the baker's technical tests of quality is the manner in which the loaves of a batch separate from each other. That they should break evenly and present a somewhat silky rather than a lumpy fracture, is a matter of trade estimation. When the fracture is rough and lumpy, one loaf pulling away some of the just belongings of its neighbor, the feelings of the orthodox baker are much wounded. ”

“ It is scarcely necessary to remark, that a temperature of the nature we have indicated cannot be without effect upon the skin of the workman; nevertheless, the machinery of these establishments consists simply of the baker’s hands and arms, and, in some cases, of their feet! With these they knead the dough much as they did at the earliest times of which we have any knowledge. The result, with respect to the bread, we leave to our reader’s imagination, but we wish particularly to draw attention to the condition of the workers. ”

“ He played about the oven so much, and was so fond of watching the bread bake and the fire burn, that the baker’s wife called him Sparkle Spry.
“For many years the country where the baker and his wife and Sparkle Spry lived had been at peace with all the other countries. But one day a man from a neighboring country had his nose pulled by somebody in the baker’s country, and then war was declared by the kings and queens, and the people fell to fighting.
“Now, when people fight they must be fed, and the cheapest thing to feed them on is bread. ”

“ We do not much approve of baking butcher’s-meat, as a substitute for roasting it, though it cannot be denied that some articles may be baked to answer nearly as well as if roasted; and when a great dinner is to be prepared it may be convenient to send a dish or two to the oven, but over these the cook can have no controul, and must, therefore, depend entirely on the baker. ”

“ THE BAKER’S DAUGHTER. A very long time ago, I cannot tell you when, it is so long since, there lived in a town in Herefordshire a baker who used to sell bread to all the folk around. He was a mean, greedy man, who sought in every way to put money by, and who did not scruple to cheat such people as he was able when they came to his shop.
He had a daughter who helped him in his business, being unmarried and living with him, and seeing how her father treated the people, and how he succeeded in getting money by his bad practices, she, too, in time came to do the like. ”

“ The reason for these public bakeries is the great cost of fuel. The Arabs have a proverb showing that such baking is the cheapest. This runs: “Send your bread to the oven of the baker even though he should eat the half of it.”
I frequently see boys carrying dough to these bakeries, or bringing bread home from them. They use trays [116] which they bear on their heads. Ancient Jerusalem had its Bakers’ Street, for we read that King Zedekiah put the prophet Jeremiah into the court of the prison and commanded that they “should give him daily a piece of bread out of the Bakers’ Street.” ”

“ Where bread is fixed to a standard weight and price, bakers are very apt to mix alum and pearlash with it, for the purpose of hastening its rising, and of encreasing its weight, by causing it to retain its moisture. If a piece of bread be soaked in water, and turns the juice of a red cabbage into a green colour, it is a proof that it contains an alkali or earthy substance, which is most probably pearlash. It is said that a compound salt is clandestinely sold in London, under the name of baker's salt, and is composed of the above ingredients. ”

“ I had it—by a visit to the bakehouse of my own baker, if possible, during the hours of work.
So I set out afresh after supper, and was most obligingly received by the proprietor of what one may well take as a typical West-end shop—neither very [61] large nor very small—what is graphically termed a "snug" concern with a good connexion, doing, as the technical phrase goes, from sixteen to twenty sacks a week. The resources of this establishment were at once placed at my disposal for the night. ”

“ Peter heard the baker say. "I bet it was worth at least five hundred francs. I should just like to know how it has happened."
[289] "The wind might have blown it down," remarked Barbara, who was staring open-mouthed at the beautiful velvet cushions. "The uncle said so himself."
"It is a good thing if nobody else has done it," continued the baker. "When the gentleman from Frankfurt hears what has happened, he'll surely find out all about it, and I should pity the culprit. ”