Black bread

“ Black bread made from coarse rye-meal, cabbage soup, weak tea (for they cannot [48] afford to have it strong) , are the daily food of the peasants. If they can get some buckwheat and dried herring, once in awhile, they think themselves well-off. ”

“ The good boys and girls in America, who eat “Indian bread,” “wheat bread,” “short cake” and “johnny cake,” have all read of the peasants of Europe living on “black bread,” and wonder what it is. It is made of rye, ground, but not bolted much, if any; and the bread is very dark, a good deal darker than corn bread. At first I did not like it very well, and at Elsinore I purchased a couple of large wheaten loaves. This bread is very dear: I paid half a dollar a loaf ”

“ An inferior black bread is made from a kind of millet that grows in low grounds. Roasted flax-seed is sometimes eaten. The flower-stock of the plantain, cooked with milk and butter, is very tender, has the flavor of new bread somewhat underdone, and is an excellent dish. ”

“ English working people everywhere, so far as I know, refuse brown bread; it is usually impossible to buy wholemeal bread in a working-class district. They sometimes give the reason that brown bread is ‘dirty’. I suspect the real reason is that in the past brown bread has been confused with black bread, which is traditionally associated with Popery and wooden shoes. (They have plenty of Popery and wooden shoes in Lancashire. A pity they haven’t the black bread as well!) But the English palate, especially the working-class palate, now rejects good food almost automatically. ”

“ Every country is naturally prejudiced in favour of its national food. We Britons look with real or affected disgust on the black rye-bread of the northern nations; and yet on this food the people thrive, are strong, healthy, and vigorous. The bread, too, is sweet to the taste. It is only disagreeable associations, therefore—connected in our minds with the darkness of the colour—that make us consider it disagreeable or unwholesome. ”

“ So I told a servant to bring the man some black bread and some beer and a little spirits, and I ordered some honey and some bread for the bear.’
‘Why did you give the poor man black bread, grandmamma?’ asked Alice.
‘In Russia, the servants and common people all eat black bread; the white bread which we 27eat here is only made for the rich people to eat!’
‘But why is that, grandmamma?’
‘It is because wheat, of which our white bread is made, does not grow nearly so well as rye in Russia and other cold countries: and rye makes black bread. It is not so good as wheat bread ”

“ Some six weeks ago I was allowed by the doctor to have white bread to eat instead of the coarse black or brown bread of ordinary prison fare. It is a great delicacy. It will sound strange that dry bread could possibly be a delicacy to any one. To me it is so much so that at the close of each meal I carefully eat whatever crumbs may be left on my tin plate, or have fallen on the rough towel that one uses as a cloth so as not to soil one’s table; and I do so not from hunger—I get now quite sufficient food—but simply in order that nothing should be wasted of what is given to me. ”

“ In the towns the use of wheaten bread is becoming more general, even among the poorer classes; but in the country parishes, barley bread is the only kind in common use. This is also of a very bad quality. The coarse barley meal is baked in large loaves, which are seldom sufficiently cooked, so that the bread is generally extremely coarse, black and sour, and more like wet dough than bread. ”

“ For Miss Hope likewise, Berrie Down was liberty hall; and therefore, while Mr. Black breakfasted off ham and fowl, eggs, and sirloins of beef, thick slices of bread and butter, and tea in quantity, the spinster, seated opposite to him, regaled herself with claret, fruits, and what Mr. Black vaguely called “green meat”—which meant lettuces, mustard and cress, and other delicacies of the same primitive nature.
Often Mr. Black openly declared his wonder that “all the trash she eat did not kill her;” ”

“ In many parts of Europe they still use a sort of cake-bread or rolls instead of loaves; and in some parts of northern Germany and Russia the bread of the peasants is nearly black, and is so coarse and sour that few English people could eat it, especially as it is kept till it grows quite hard, and sometimes has to be cut with a saw. ”

“ From the slimy, spittle-drenched, sidewalk, they were picking up bits of orange peel, apple skin, and grape stems, and, they were eating them. The pits of greengage plums they cracked between their teeth for the kernels inside. They picked up stray bits of bread the size of peas, apple cores so black and dirty one would not take them to be apple cores, and these things these two men took into their mouths, and chewed them, and swallowed them; ”

“ It is always black, then, that these things turn, is it not? and a fine rich charcoaly black, as you may see if you please to observe charcoal closely, for just such is the color of little burnt cakes, over-roasted chestnuts, and potatoes in their skins, which have been dropped into the fire. ”

“ In Denmark, too, rye bread is the rule among the74 peasantry and small farmers—wheaten bread being to them a luxury, and used as cake is with us. In Russia, although its chief export is wheat from the Black Sea, and oats and rye from the Baltic, the peasant eats but rye bread dipped in hemp oil, and even then, as but a few years since, famine visits this granary, and the hapless peasants being reduced to mix orach and bark with their wretched bread, have at times been unable to procure even this, and have died in thousands of starvation. ”

“ In these circumstances the author bids adieu to fame, writes for bread, and for that only. Imagination is seldom called in. He sits down to address the venal muse with the most phlegmatic apathy; and, as we are told of the Russian, courts his mistress by falling asleep in her lap. His reputation never spreads in a wider circle than that of the trade, who generally value him, not for the fineness of his compositions, but the quantity he works off in a given time. ”

“ Appeal of Columbus Bread Company, 4 B.T.A. 1126. A taxpayer who has been prosecuted under a federal or state statute and convicted of a crime has not been permitted a tax deduction for his attorney's fee. ”

“ We have long since exploded the idea that whiteness is a test of superiority, for we know that this is attained by excluding the most wholesome and nutritious part of the wheat and by the use of chemicals. Even when we use brown bread, we are by no means sure of having a wholemeal loaf, for it is as often as not merely the ordinary flour with some bran mixed in. And bran is only one part—by no means the most important—of that in which the meal is lacking. ”

“ Is it not absurd to talk of poverty, and yet pay a seventh or eighth part more than they need, to gratify a fantastic appetite? Had it not been from the custom of eating whiter bread than the whole flour of the wheat will make, should we have thus imposed on ourselves? Would the miller or baker employ all his art to make the bread as white as possible, and oblige us to pay for this artificial whiteness? They tell the consumer, the whiter it is, the finer ”

“ In cities and towns and in many country villages the baker supplies the general need. Yielding to the popular demand for white bread, he uses flour that has been robbed of its most nutritious properties, and introduces unwholesome substances to make it light and white. The best bread is that in which the starch cells are most completely burst. The making of wholesome, palatable, home-made bread is becoming a “lost art” even among farmers’ wives and daughters. ”

“ Unbolted flour, altogether more wholesome than the fine wheat, and when properly prepared more palatable,—rye-flour and corn-meal, each affording a thousand attractive possibilities,—each and all of these come under the general laws of bread-stuffs, and are worth a careful attention.
A peculiarity of our American table, particularly in the Southern and Western States, is the constant exhibition of various preparations of hot bread. In many families of the South and West, bread in loaves to be eaten cold is an article quite unknown. ”

“ The law with English breads and cakes of whatever nature appears to be to work in all the flour the dough can hold, and pudding must be a slab, and bread compact and dense to satisfy the English palate. Dripping is the substitute for butter, and the children eat the slice of bread and dripping contentedly. Fat of any sort is in demand, the piercing rawness of an English winter seeming to call for heating food no less than that of the Esquimaux for its rations of blubber and tallow. ”

“ Such seconds flour does not fairly produce white bread, and consumers are unwise in demanding whiteness. In my household we make our own bread, but occasionally, when the demand exceeds ordinary supply, a loaf or two is bought from the baker. I find that, with corresponding or identical flour, the baker’s bread is whiter than the home-made, and proportionally inferior. I may describe it as colourless in flavour, it lacks the characteristic of wheaten sweetness. ”

“ Because of the variety these hot breads afford, they help considerably to relieve the monotony of meals. In fact, the housewife has come to depend so much on breads of this kind that their use has become almost universal. As is well known, however, certain kinds are typical of certain localities; for instance, beaten biscuit and hoe cake are characteristic of the Southern States of the United States, while Boston brown bread is used most extensively in the New England States and throughout the East. The popular opinion of most persons is that hot breads are injurious. ”

“ The negro women and girls commence with growing vegetables in the gardens, beginning with the most needed food crops and enlarging their operations gradually. Then they undertake to conserve enough for home use during the winter. They sell the surplus vegetables, both fresh and canned. It is an easy step from canning vegetables to the preservation of fruits. Better bread comes next because of its importance as food and because flour, meal, and grains in general are available. Then eggs and butter are standardized, and poultry meat is properly [Pg 11] cooked and canned. ”

“ Of all the cereals wheat contains the most gluten, with rye holding second place. Maize and rice, as well as chestnuts and potatoes, are wholly lacking [7] in this ingredient; and for that reason flour made from them, rich though it be in starch, is not at all the kind of flour for bread. This will explain to you the superiority of wheat over all other farinaceous grains.
“Wheat, the only cereal that can give us white bread, that superior bread which nevertheless is not always to your taste unless spread with a little butter, does not grow in all countries. ”

“ You ought to taste the miserable bread made from barley in order to find our bread good—or, I might better say, in order to find it an exquisite dainty even without butter or jam. Barley bread is full of long bristles that stick in the throat; it contains more bran than flour; it is bitter, stodgy, and of a disagreeable odor. Oh, what sorry stuff! And yet many have to be content with it, and are only glad if they can get enough of it.
Barley
“In the greater part of the world wheat, widely distributed by commerce, furnishes bread only for the tables of the rich. ”

“ If whole-meal bread is ordered of the English baker, he throws a handful of bran into this same flour; and the brown loaf looks tempting enough, but both it and the white one are alike tasteless and insipid, and destitute of nutritious qualities. What is really wanted for good bread is just simply the entire contents of the grain, as nature, who after all knows best, has given it to us. ”

“ They have not only succeeded by such means, in making light and white bread out of extremely poor flour, but they have also been able so to disguise their adulterations, as to work in with their flour, without being detected by the consumers, a 45portion of the flour of beans, peas and potatoes—and even chalk, pipe clay and plaster of Paris, have been employed to increase the weight and whiteness of their bread. ”

“ We should insist on always having real French or German-style bread, with crisp, tasty crust, refusing the soggy loaves made of bleached, bolted flour robbed of its nutritious phosphates and sources of Flavor; refusing also the machine-polished rice deprived of its nutritious outer parts, in which lies the delicate Flavor of this [68] cereal, leaving it pretty to look at, but, as one of the Government's agricultural experts, David Fairchild, has forcibly expressed it, "as tasteless as the paste that a paper-hanger brushes on his rolls of wallpaper." ”

“ For a while, barbarous faddists—blind to the deeply spiritual nature of bread, which is recognized by all great religions—held back our march toward perfection with their hair-splitting insistence on the vitamin content of the wheat germ, but their case collapsed when tasteless colorless substitutes were triumphantly synthesized and introduced into the loaf, which for flawless purity, unequaled airiness and sheer intangible goodness was rapidly becoming mankind's supreme gustatory experience. ”

“ Since that time half a century has passed, and whilst the agricultural produce in France has tripled in value, the labourers who produce it continue, from custom and necessity, to eat a detestable bread made from rye, barley, or peas and potatoes; and, to make the matter still worse, it is badly baked, without yeast, and being sometimes kept for weeks, it becomes covered with mould, and altogether presents an appearance enough to turn the stomach of a savage. ”