Instructions for making unfermented bread. With observations on its properties, medicinal and economic / By a physician [i.e. George Darling].

  • George Darling
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Instructions for making unfermented bread. With observations on its properties, medicinal and economic / By a physician [i.e. George Darling]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    alum, otherwise employed; but were it not so, they would form an altogether unimportant* item in the price of the bread; while, by their use, a saving is effected in the flour of about 10 per cent.f In the common process, the saccharine part of the flour, with a portion of both the gum and the gluten, is lost by being converted into carbonic acid and spirit, which are driven into the atmosphere by the heat of the oven; and this waste is incurred, as was before remarked, solely for the pur¬ pose of getting carbonic acid to raise the dough. By the new method, the waste is avoided and the gas obtained in a manner equally beautiful and efflcacious,—another striking instance of the successful application of chemical philosophy to the common arts of life. It may not be out of place to observe, that mistaken notions respecting the quality of different sorts of bread have 2:iven rise to much waste in another way. The general belief is, that bread made of the finest flour is the best, and that whiteness is the proof of its quality; but both these opinions are popular errors. The whiteness may be, and generally is, communicated by alum, to the injury of the consumer; and it is known to men of science, that the entire meal will sustain life, while common bread made with refined flour will not. Keep a man on unfermented brown bread and water, and he will live and enjoy good health; give him fermented white bread and water only, and he will gradually sicken and die. The meal of which * The wholesale price of the soda, in London, at the present time, is 23s. per cwt.— and of the acid, l^d. per lb. per carboy. The baker who supplies the author’s family obtains soda at 3d. per lb., and acid at 2d. per lb, in moderate quantities, from Mr. Bainbridge, 60, Leather Lane, Ilolborn. Mr. B. promises to supply other bakers as well as private families at the same rates. Mr. Battley, Mdiite Cross Street, Finsbury, undertakes to do the same ; and other chemists and druggists will, no doubt, follow their example. t The waste varies, according to the degree to which the fermenta¬ tion has been excited and its duration; and consequently is greater in some hands and in some places than in others. M. Dumas, in his ‘‘Chimie Appliqu^e,” makes the loss in Paris 17'6 per cent. The author’s experiments were made in London.
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