Graham flour

“ Potapsco flour is of the same quality as the St. Louis. It contains more starch than the St. Louis, and for this reason requires, even more than that, the use in the family of coarser or graham flour at the same time; white bread alone not being as nutritious or strengthening, for reasons given in Part I. Graham flour is fast being superseded by a much better form, prepared principally by the Health Food Company in New York, in which the entire grain, save the husk, is ground as fine as the ordinary flour, thus doing away with the coarseness that many have objected to in graham bread. ”

“ And unless Graham dough is of the proper consistency, the bread when baked will be moist, sticky and insipid, or dry, rough and unpalatable. The correct proportions are a little more than two measures of Graham flour to one measure of “wetting.”
Oat, Corn and Barley Bread.—Fermented bread can be made of oat, corn, or barley meal, or flour; care being taken to add wetting in proportion to the demands of the grain. When corn or oat meal is used, boiling water should be poured upon it and it be permitted to swell for at least an hour before the yeast is added. ”

“ Whole Wheat Flour.—It is claimed that bran in Graham flour often proves an irritant to delicate digestive organs. In whole wheat flour we have the entire food principle of the grain without the hull. The cold blast process of milling gives us this flour of a very superior quality.
Whole Wheat Flour Bread should be made in every particular like patent or new process flour bread, and baked in loaves, twists, or fancy rolls. ”

“ Whole-wheat flour ferments more readily and rises more quickly than does white flour, hence bread made with it needs more careful management, as it is more liable to sour. The novice in bread-making should not undertake the preparation of bread with whole-wheat flour, until she has thoroughly mastered all the details of the art by practical experience, and can produce a perfect loaf from white flour.
Breads from whole-wheat and Graham flours require less yeast and less flour than bread prepared from white flour. A slower process of fermentation is also advantageous. ”

“ Much of the so-called Graham flour is nothing more than poor flour mixed with bran, and is in every way inferior to good white flour. Fine flour or made from the entire wheat may generally be distinguished from a spurious article by taking a small portion into the mouth and chewing it. ”

“ Scald and strain the meal over night; thin with the milk, and make into a sponge with the Graham flour, molasses and yeast. In the morning, add salt, white flour, soda and butter, and stir in enough cold water to make batter of the right consistency.
Graham and Indian cakes are far more wholesome in the spring of the year than any preparation of buckwheat. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Inferior grades of flour are largely exported, while the best are mainly used at home. Graham flour is ground wheat from which the bran has not been removed.
Flour is put up in barrels of one hundred and ninety-six pounds net weight, and in muslin sacks of various weights. Families everywhere invariably want “the best,” and dealers often adopt the excellent plan of buying quantities of some very choice and tried grade of flour and selling it in convenient sized packages for family trade, under their own brand and guarantee. ”

“ Wheat is milled for converting into flour by processes producing essentially the same results, all requiring cleansing, grinding, and bolting. Entire wheat flour has only the outer husk removed, the remainder of the kernel being finely ground. Graham flour, confounded with entire wheat, is too often found to be an inferior flour, mixed with coarse bran. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It contains the starch, gluten, phosphorous compounds, iron and lime. It is the most desirable of the flours because, containing the bran, it assists in digestion and elimination, and the phosphorous, iron and lime are valuable for body building.
Nutri meal is much the same as Graham flour, the chief difference being that the bran is ground finer. The wheat is ground between hot rollers, the heat bringing out the nutty flavor of the bran. It contains all of the nutrition of the wheat. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It would be difficult to ascertain at how early a period in the progress of society, mankind, in the preparation of wheat for bread-making, began to put asunder what God has joined together, and to concentrate the more purely nutrient properties, by separating the flour from the part commonly called the bran. The Bible speaks of fine flour or meal, as a portion of the meat offerings of the temple, but it is not probable this approached very near to the superfine flour of the present time. ”

“ There is a great deal of bogus stuff in the market, which has brought the genuine article into disrepute, and made many thoughtful people disgusted with everything in that line. Very much that is called Graham flour is made up of a mixture of fine bolted flour, and the woody fibre of the wheat, which has no nutriment in it at all. This wretched fabrication has tended to make all whole wheat products unpopular. The woody bran is worse than worthless as food, or to mix with food. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One pint of rye flour, one quart of corn meal, one teacupful of Graham flour, all fresh; half a teacupful of molasses or brown sugar, a teaspoonful of salt, and two-thirds of a teacupful of home-made yeast. Mix into as stiff a dough as can be stirred with a spoon, using warm water for wetting. Let it rise several hours, or over night; in the morning, or when light, add a teaspoonful of soda dissolved in a spoonful of warm water; beat it well and turn it into well-greased, deep bread-pans, and let it rise again. Bake in a moderate oven from three to four hours. ”

“ It is perfectly certain that if two portions of wheat meal or flour be taken from the same barrel or sack, and one portion be made into unleavened bread, and the other portion be made into the very best fermented or raised bread, and both be eaten as soon as they are baked, the fermented bread will digest with more difficulty, and oppress and disturb the stomach more than the unleavened bread will. ”

“ Both graham and whole-wheat flours produce a more wholesome bread than any of the varieties of white flour, because they contain more of the nutritive elements and mineral salts, which are necessary in the diet. The bran that is retained in them is not used by the body as food, but it adds bulk to the diet and assists in carrying on the normal functions of the digestive tract. ”

“ From a variety of causes, the quality and price of flour have always been very unstable. Sometimes the crops are small, or the foreign demand for flour or the home consumption is unusually great, or the season is unfavorable to the health of grain, and the wheat becomes diseased, or the harvest time is unfavorable, and the wheat sprouts before it is secured, or large quantities of flour become soured or musty, or in some other manner damaged. ”

“ But at whatever period in the history of the race, this artificial process was commenced, certain it is that in direct violation of the laws of constitution and relation which the Creator has established in the nature of man, this process of mechanical analysis is, at the present day, carried to the full extent of possibility; and the farina, and gluten, and saccharine matter of the wheat, are almost perfectly concentrated in the form of superfine flour. ”

“ Graham bread is made from unbolted wheat, the bran not separated from the flour. The coarse meal swells more in rising, and should not be made so stiff as fine flour. It sours more quickly, requires a hotter oven, and longer time to bake. Much kneading is essential to cement together the [Pg 106] starch, sugar, albumen, and gluten found in wheat. It is not easy to knead bread sufficiently for a satisfactory result. Many machines for this purpose have been invented, but we have yet to see one that can be as fully depended upon as a strong arm and a skillful hand. ”

“ A gruel may be prepared by diluting a cooked cereal and straining. Gruels should be of the consistency of cream soups. Corn-meal, oatmeal, barley, rice, flour— especially graham, whole wheat, and gluten—arrowroot, and crushed crackers—especially graham and oatmeal—are suitable cereals for gruels. Water or a combination of water and milk is used for the liquid. When both water and milk are used, the method of cooking Rice Pudding should be followed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Take care that it does not burn in baking. The molasses renders it liable to scorching. The oven must be steady, but not so hot as for white bread, nor will the Graham bread be done quite so soon as that made of bolted flour. Turn the pans once while baking, moving them as gently as possible. If rudely shaken or jarred, there will be heavy streaks in the loaves.
Graham bread is wholesome and sweet, and ought to be eaten frequently in every family, particularly by young people whose bones and teeth are in forming. ”

“ Pearlash or saleratus is also used by them in considerable quantities.
But even where these adulterations are not practised, the bakers’ bread is very rarely a wholesome article of diet.
If any dependence is to be placed on the testimony of several of the principal bakers and flour merchants in New York, Boston and other cities, the flour which most of our public bakers work into bread, is of a very inferior quality to what is called good “family flour,” and for which they pay from one to three dollars less per barrel ”

“ I have no doubt that it is true, as stated by those who have made the experiment, that the flour of wheat, raised on a cultivated soil recently dressed with crude, stable manure, may readily be distinguished by its odor, from the flour of wheat raised on a new and undepraved soil, or from that raised on a cultivated soil which has been dressed with properly digested manure. ”

“ And the thousands of individuals in our own country of every age—of both sexes—of all situations, conditions and circumstances, who within the last six years have been benefited by using the coarse wheaten bread, instead of that made of superfine flour, are living witnesses of the virtues of that bread. ”

“ Put into a clean and slightly oiled bread bowl, cover, and set to rise again. When double its first bulk, mold into a loaf; allow it to rise again, and bake.
Graham Bread No. 3.—Mix three pounds each of Graham and Minnesota spring wheat flour. Make a sponge of one and a half pints of warm water, one half cake compressed yeast, well dissolved in the water, and flour to form a batter. Let this rise. When well risen, add one and a half pints more of warm water, one half cup full of New Orleans molasses, and sufficient flour to knead. Work the bread thoroughly, allow it to rise in mass ”