Aërated bread : the new system of bread manufacture.

Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Aërated bread : the new system of bread manufacture. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    merely alludes to different forms of cakes, biscuits, &c. Galen, speaking of bread, says the best kinds are such as contain plenty of leaven, have been properly pounded, and exposed to a moderate heat in the oven. He objects to unleavened bread. Celsus, however, places “ unleavened bread first among those things that do not spoil on the stomach;” and he says of bread, that it contains more nourishment than any other food. Although the ancients in general made use of leaven, still it is mentioned by Pliny that the Gauls and Spaniards made use of yeast to ferment their bread. The Bible constantly alludes to bread, both leavened and un¬ leavened ; and showing the importance in which the Jews held it, we frequently have such passages as “ The Bread of Life,” “ Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread ?” &c. Bread being to them of the greatest value, was made typical in many of their most solemn rites. Even amongst uncivilized nations, except a few of the most degraded, bread is eaten in some form or other. Normadic tribes eat bread ; although they may cultivate no cereal, yet prolific Nature has placed at their command fruits which in their chemical composition resemble most intimately the bread of Europeans. The date of the desert grows aloft at every spring, yielding to the wanderer its pleasant food, grateful to his hand ; it affords him the same nourishment that bread does to the inhabitant of a colder clime, it is suited to his wants, and upon it he lives. The South Sea Islanders have their bread-fruit, which when baked resembles in its flavour sweet wheaten bread, and on which the natives live the whole year round, for the tree bears during nine months, and during the remaining three they eat the fruit, which has been harvested in pits, and which, after undergoing fermentation, being baked, yields a bread somewhat sour, still nutritious. Many of the graminese, besides wheat, answer to the definition I have given of bread ; still, wheat alone, ground, mixed with water, kneaded and baked, yields the loaf of the shops. Rye and barley give an inferior loaf ; but Indian corn, oats, buckwheat, quinoa, and Indian millet, fail altogether to form that peculiar porous mass termed a loaf, and which has been always found to be more easy of digestion, as the fluids are enabled more readily to permeate the sponge to dissolve it. The subject of bread has been a prolific one : numerous most valuable papers have appeared from time to time, scattered about in various works and periodicals ; still, from the contradictory assertions they contain, and from the new processes for the manufacture of bread which have lately appeared, I believe there is plenty of room for the “ Hygiene of Bread.” I purpose, therefore, to treat of bread principally as to its dietetic relations ; . and although I shall enter into the chemistry of the ingredients, and the process of manufacture, yet the various causes for its adaptability to certain states of the system, and not to others—the reasons for the' digestibility of fermented bread by some, and unfer-