Leavened bread

“ Of bread, the fifteenth century had several descriptions in use: pain-main or bread of very fine flour, wheat-bread, barley-meal bread, bran-bread, bean-bread, pease-bread, oat-bread or oat-cakes, hard-bread, and unleavened bread. The poor often used a mixture of rye, lentils, and oatmeal, varied according to the season and district. ”

“ If, however, the dough be thoroughly kneaded, rolled very thin, made into small cakes, and then quickly baked with sufficient heat, the result will be a brittle kind of bread termed unleavened bread, which, although it requires a lengthy process of mastication, is more wholesome and digestible than soft bread, which is likely to be swallowed insufficiently insalivated. ”

“ In Roman catholic countries it is still used, and prepared with the finest wheaten flour, moistened with water, and pressed between two plates, graven like wafer moulds, being first rubbed with wax to prevent the paste from sticking, and when dry it is used. Unleavened bread is hardly less nutritious than loaf or fermented bread, but it is generally speaking neither so wholesome nor so digestible. ”

“ Unquestionably, unleavened bread, well kneaded and properly baked, is the most wholesome of all breads, but harder to masticate than that made light by fermentation, but this is an advantage; for it insures more thorough mixing with that important digestive agent, the saliva, than is usually given to more easily softened food. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Uses for Stale Bread All pieces of bread should be saved and utilized. Large pieces are best for toast. Soft stale bread, from which crust is removed, when crumbed, is called stale breadcrumbs, or raspings, and is used for puddings, griddle-cakes, omelets, scalloped dishes, and dipping food to be fried. Remnants of bread, from which crusts have not been removed, are dried in oven, rolled, and sifted. These are called dry bread crumbs, and are useful for crumbing croquettes, cutlets, fish, meat, etc. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One of the best kinds of bread for sickly people, is made of wheaten flour, the coarse or husky bran being taken out, but not finely dressed; otherwise it would be dry, and obstructing to the stomach. The inner skin or branny parts of wheat contain a moisty quality, which is opening and cleansing, while the fine floury parts afford more nourishment. ”

“ In the first place, much can be effected by keeping on hand a good supply of the various bread-stuffs. Good raised bread, of fine flour, must be the grand staple, but this may, every day, be accompanied with varieties of bread made of unbolted flour, or rye and Indian, or Indian alone, or potato and apple bread, or rice bread, or the various biscuits and rusk. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We all know how difficult it is to obtain pure milk and butter, or pure bread from pure flour, or jams made with sugar from fresh and good fruit. Bread may be made from flour which has passed through no less than seven processes,—a sad contrast this to the old home-made bread, the product of home-ground meal, whole and sweet as nature made it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Steamed Bread.—Steaming stale bread is as open to objection as the surface toasting of bread, if steamed so as to be yielding and adhesive. It is not, perhaps, as unwholesome as new bread, but bread is best eaten in a condition dry and hard enough to require chewing, that its starch may be so changed by the action of the saliva as to be easily digested. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From experiments in which I have been employed, with the assistance of skilful bakers, I am authorised to state, that without the addition of alum, it does not appear possible to make white, light, and porous bread, such as is used in this metropolis, unless the flour be of the very best quality. ”

“ The woody fibre is not digested, but serves by its bulk and stimulating action to facilitate digestion. It is therefore evident that bread made of unbolted flour is more healthful than that made of superfine flour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In times of scarcity and famine various substances, besides the flour of the cereals, have been made into bread, or have been mixed with it, in order to lessen the quantity of the former required by the people. For this purpose, almost every amylaceous vegetable at once plentiful and cheap has, in its turn, been eagerly appropriated. Acorns, beech-mast, the leguminous seeds, numerous starchy bulbous roots, and similar substances, have been employed, either in the form of meal, or made into an emulsion or jelly, which has been used instead of water to form the flour of bread-corn into a dough. ”

“ Besides march-pain or pain-main, and pain-puff, two sorts baked on special occasions, and rather entering into the class of confectionery, our better-to-do ancestors usually employed three descriptions of bread: manchete for the master's table, made of fine boulted flour; chete, of unboulted flour, but not mixed with any coarser ingredient; and brown-bread, composed of flour and rye meal, and known as maslin (mystelon) . ”

“ One pound of pea-meal, or ground split-peas, added to every fourteen pounds of flour used for bread increases its nourishment, and helps to satisfy hunger.
Keep your bread in a covered earthen jar; when it is too stale to eat, or make into bread broth, dry it in a cool oven, or over the top of the fire, roll it with a rolling-pin, sift it through a sieve, and save the finest crumbs to roll fish or chops in for frying, and the largest for puddings. If a whole loaf is stale put it into a tight tin can, and either steam it, or put it into a moderately warm oven for half an hour ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have witnessed at a baker’s, who has the reputation for making excellent rolls, forty-eight pounds of dough moulded into one hundred (penny) rolls; they weighed, when drawn out of the oven, twenty-six pounds.
The bread called in this metropolis French rolls, and French bread, is made precisely in the same manner, namely, from common bread dough, but of a less stiff consistence; they are suffered to rise to a greater extent than dough intended for loaf-bread. ”

“ The term “Bread” when used alone is understood in this country to apply to bread made from wheat flour or some form of wheat. If made from other cereals a prefix is used to distinguish this fact, as Indian corn bread, rye bread, etc. The term bread includes also the materials which are used necessarily therewith in the ordinary process of baking. Thus, the term bread would apply to a loaf which contains not only the wheat flour as the base and chief part of its mass but also the yeast or other leavening agent employed, together with salt, lard, or butter used in its preparation. ”

“ Angell, "the true life-giving and mental, moral, and physical force-producing bread is neither more nor less than sound, ripe wheat when deprived of its thin outer silicious husk, coarsely ground and mixed with water, and subjected to just that degree of kneading and baking which will suffice to prepare it for mastication, insalivation, and the subsequent action of the gastric juice." ”

“ Take then such a quantity of meal, in a perfectly clean and sweet bread trough, as is necessary for the quantity of bread desired, and having made a hollow in the centre, turn in as much yeast as a judgment matured by sound experience shall deem requisite; then add such a quantity of water, milk and water, or clear milk, as is necessary to form the meal into a dough of proper consistency. Some prefer bread mixed with water alone; others prefer that which is mixed with milk and water; and others think that bread mixed with good milk is much richer and better ”

“ While on the subject of whole-meal bread, why is it that in England the nutritious, flinty part of the grain is almost invariably taken out and made into macaroni or used for other purposes, while the bread is made of flour from which all the goodness has been refined away? ”

“ For this purpose the flour ought to be well prepared, and kept in a dry place. Some persons like brown bread, but it is not, in general, so wholesome as that which is all white. Six pounds of rye flour, to a peck of wheaten flour, makes very good bread. ”

“ Coarsely ground wheat 71meal, even when the bran is retained, makes decidedly sweeter and more wholesome bread than very finely ground meal. When the meal is ground, it should immediately be spread out to cool before it is put into sacks or casks:—for if it is packed or enclosed in a heated state, it will be far more likely to become sour and musty. And I say again, where families are in circumstances to do wholly as they choose in the matter, it is best to have but little ground at a time; as the freshly ground meal is always the liveliest and sweetest, and makes the most delicious bread. ”

“ Bread made of Earth. The strangest substitute for bread that has ever been employed, is a sort of white earth. The poor in the Lordship of Moscoa in Upper Lusania, have been frequently compelled to make use of this earth as a substitute for bread.
The earth is dug out of a pit where saltpetre had formerly been worked; when exposed to the rays of the sun it splits and cracks, and small globules issue from it like meal, which ferments when mixed with flour. On this earth, baked into bread, many persons have subsisted a considerable 51time. ”

“ 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. ”