Unleavened bread

“ In general all forms of bread may be divided into two great classes, leavened and unleavened. By far, the greater quantity of bread consumed belongs to the former class. Unleavened bread is used chiefly for certain religious festivals, in the form of biscuits or in certain varieties of Indian corn bread such as hoe cake, johnnie cake, etc. Of the leavened bread there are two distinct classes, namely, bread which is baked and eaten cold and bread which is consumed hot from the oven. ”

“ In nearly all forms of unleavened bread made from wheat flour the dough is thoroughly beaten, and mechanically mixed or kneaded, in order to make it lighter in color and more crisp and hard after baking. ”

“ 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. ”

“ GRAINS USED FOR FLOUR.--As has been pointed out elsewhere, numerous grains are raised by man, but only two of them, namely, wheat and rye, are used alone for the making of yeast, or leavened, bread. The other grains, such as corn, rice, and oats, produce a flat, unleavened cake, so they are seldom used for bread making unless they are mixed with white flour. Wheat and rye have been used for bread making for a very long time, and their universal use today is due to the fact that they contain considerable protein in the form of gluten. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 may now understand why potatoes, rice, beans, pease, buckwheat, millet, oats, and other nutritive cereal grains, abounding in starch, cannot be made into light and porous bread, although they are well calculated for being made into wholesome puddings, and why they only form crude, 61heavy, insipid cakes, when made into dough and baked, and not light porous loaf-bread. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Barley, rye, and some other grains would be very useful for bread if it were not that they lack sufficient gluten to entangle enough carbonic acid to render bread made from them light.
Good bread cannot be made without good flour. There are two kinds usually to be found in market, namely bread flour, and pastry flour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If dough is left standing in a warm place a number of hours, it swells up with gas and becomes porous, and when baked, is less compact and hard than the savage bread. Exposure to air and warmth brings about changes in dough as well as in fruit juices, and alters the character of the dough and the bread made from it. Bread made in this way would not seem palatable to civilized man of the present day, accustomed, as he is, to delicious bread made light and porous by yeast ”

“ 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 one gallon of meal as it comes from the mill, be well mixed with an equal measure of flour, and made into a dough in the manner directed for white household bread, the loaves will still be sufficiently brown for the general taste in this country, and they will be good and wholesome, though not, perhaps, so entirely easy of digestion as Baron Liebig’s Bavarian bread. ”

“ 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. ”

“ After the abrading process is completed, the whole of the grain is reduced to a fine flour, in which there is retained all the substances that are nutritious and digestible. Considering the fact that the whole-meal bread, when properly manufactured, is easily assimilated, we are led to the conclusion that it must be more nutritious generally than any other bread, in which starch predominates. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If you do not have a good oven, your bread can be baked at the baker's for about a cent a loaf. When bread is made too light it is tasteless, and lacks nourishment, because the decay caused in the elements of the flour used to make it by the great quantity of yeast employed, destroys the most nutritious parts of it. A pint of milk in a batch of four loaves of bread gives you a pound more bread of better quality, and helps to make it moist. Scalded skim milk will go as far as fresh whole milk, and you can use the cream for some other dish. ”

“ When it is risen in the pans so as to crack, it is ready for the oven, and if it stands after this it loses sweetness, and then turns sour. A great deal of bread is spoiled by standing too long after it is put in the pans. The only way to prevent this is for the housekeeper to ascertain, by experiment, how soon her yeast ordinarily raises bread to the right point, so as to make that full lightness which does not destroy the sweetness of the flour, and yet is complete. ”

“ The quantity of flour necessary to make dough of the proper consistency for bread depends considerably upon its quality, and varies from two and a half to three measures of flour to one measure of “wetting.” More flour can, however, be added, and the dough made considerably stiffer, without perceptible detriment. Dough for fancy bread and rolls should be quite stiff, so as to retain any desired shape or form. Soft, spongy bread possesses greater delicacy when freshly baked, but appears to lose its moisture and grow stale much sooner than that which is more compact. ”

“ Finally, having found a brand of flour from which you can make yellow-white instead of snow-white bread, which has a nutty, sweet flavor, which in mixing absorbs much liquid, and does not "run" after you think you have got it stiff enough, and which feels puffy and elastic to the hand after molding, keep it; it is probably good.
Often the same flour is sold in different sections of the country under different names, so that it is impossible to recommend any special brand. Each buyer must ascertain for herself which brands in her locality are best. It is just as easy to have good bread as poor. ”

“ But for our ordinary loaf of bread, at least some wheat seems to be almost essential, though with skill in the making, rye can be made to serve in its place. Patriotic bakers and housewives all over the country [pg 23] have been trying to produce a wheatless loaf which is light, palatable, and sufficiently durable to stand transportation. The durability is a very important consideration; crumbly corn bread cannot be distributed by bakers nor served to armies. Corn bread and the other quick breads are chiefly home-made products. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some cooks prefer flour that has been delicately browned for setting the sponge for bread.
A good bread kneader is one of the best investments in cooking utensils. It saves time and strength and makes better bread.
“In the making of raised or yeast bread, milk should not be used in place of water. The use of milk is an additional expense and it makes the bread much less wholesome. Milk bread does not keep sweet so long after baking as does that made with water and it ferments more readily in the stomach.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is no one thing upon which health and comfort in a [Pg 23] family so much depend as bread. With good bread the coarsest fare is tolerable; without it, the most luxurious table is not comfortable.
It is best economy to purchase the best flour, even at an extra cost. Good flour adheres slightly to the hand, and if pressed in it, shows the impress of the lines of the skin. Dough made of it is a yellowish white, and does not stick to the hands after sufficient kneading. There is much bad flour in market, which can in no way be made into nutritious food. ”

“ The national bread, which is made of flour, water and a little salt, with a sprinkling of caraway seed, rolled very thin and punctured with holes like a cracker, is baked only once or twice a year, and then in large quantities, as New England women bake mince pies and put them on the top shelf to season. ”