Part 2
At the time of Augustus, there were upwards of 300 baking houses in Rome, almost the whole of which were occupied by Greeks. The bakers enjoyed in ancient Rome great privileges. The public granaries were entrusted to their care; they formed a corporation, or kind of college, from which neither they nor their children were permitted to withdraw. They were exempted from guardianships and public services, which might interfere with their occupation. They were eligible to become Senators; and those who married the daughters of bakers, became members of the college.
From the establishment of bakers in Rome, the art of making loaf, or fermented bread, spread amongst the ancient Gauls; but its progress in the northern countries of Europe was slow, and in some northern districts, the luxury of eating fermented, or loaf-bread, is at this day not in general use. Some of the modern Italians consume the greatest part of their bread-flour in the state of _macaroni_ and _vermicelli_, and in other forms of _polenta_, or soft pudding; and even at present millions of people neither sow nor reap, but content themselves with enjoying the spontaneous productions of the earth.
Bread Corn,
Properly so called, of which loaf-bread is chiefly made among cultivated nations, comprehends the seeds of the whole tribe of (_cerealia_), or gramineous plants; for they all contain a farinaceous substance, of a similar nature, and chiefly composed of starch. Those of the _cerealia_ in common use are the following:
Wheat _Triticum hybernum._ Barley _Hordeum vulgare._ Rye _Secale cereale._
With us, wheat is chiefly employed for the fabrication of bread. It is, in fact, the only grain of which light porous bread can be made; but rye and barley are also used as bread-corn. The farina of the other _cerealia_ afford also a nutritive and wholesome bread; though their flour is not so susceptible of the panary fermentation, it cannot be made into the white texture of the wheaten loaf. The bread formed from them is consequently much inferior to that prepared from wheat. The following seeds are chiefly employed to make a species of bread:
Oats _Avena Sativa._ Maize _Zea Mays._ Rice _Oriza Sativa._ Millet _Panicum milliaceum._
Oats are used in the north of Europe for making a kind of bread, called oatmeal-cake, and particularly by the inhabitants of Scotland. Maize is frequently employed as bread-corn in North America.
Rice nourishes more human beings than all the other seeds together, used as food; and it is by many considered the most nutritive of all sorts of grain. A very ridiculous prejudice has existed with respect to rice, namely, that it is prejudicial to the sight, by causing diseases of the eye; but no authority can warrant this assertion: on the contrary, the opinion of the ablest men (Cullen’s Mat. Med. v. i. p. 229) may be quoted in favour of rice being a very healthy food: and the experience of all Asia and America may be adduced with sufficient weight to have answered this objection, if it had been supported by any thing more than vulgar prejudice, unsupported by facts. This grain is peculiarly calculated to diminish the evils of a scanty harvest, an inconvenience which must occasionally affect all countries, particularly those which are very populous. It is the most fitted of all food to be of use in relieving general distress in a bad season[2], because it comes from a part of the world where provisions are cheap and abundant; it is light, easy of carriage, keeps well for a long time, and contains a great deal of wholesome food within a small compass. Indeed, it has been ascertained that one part of rice contains as much food and useful nourishment as six of wheat.
Footnote 2:
Reports of the Society for bettering the Condition of the Poor, Vol. I. p. 137.
Next to the _cerealia_, the seeds of _leguminous plants_ may be regarded as substitutes for bread corn. Their ripe seeds afford the greatest quantity of alimentary matter. Their meal has a sweetish taste, but they cannot be made into light and porous bread, without the addition of a portion of wheaten flour. Their meal, however, though it forms but a coarse and indifferent bread, neither very palatable nor very digestible, except by the most robust stomachs, is yet highly nutritive.
It is remarked by Dr. Cullen, that “on certain farms of this country, upon which the leguminous seeds are produced in great abundance, the labouring servants are much fed upon that kind of grain; but if such servants are removed to a farm upon which the _leguminous seeds_ are not in such plenty, and therefore they are fed with the _cerealia_, they soon find a decay of strength; and it is common for servants, in making such removals, to insist on their being provided daily, or weekly, with a certain quantity of the leguminous meal.” We are not, however, to conclude from this observation, that pease-meal bread, is really more nutritive than wheaten bread, or than the meal of the other _cerealia_. We are rather disposed to regard it as an example of the effect of habit.
The _leguminous seeds_ employed in the fabrication of bread, are
Pease _Pisum Sativum._ Beans _Vicia faba._ Kidney Beans _Phaseolus vulgaris._
The whole of this tribe afford a much more agreeable, though not a more nutritive aliment, when their seeds are used green, young, and tender, and simply boiled, than when fully ripened, and their flour baked.
It is remarked, that all the substances of which bread is made, as well as the substitutes for it, when chemically considered, are chiefly composed of one and the same identical material; namely, the farinaceous matter of the seeds, roots, fruits, or other products of vegetables, of different climates and soils; and that _starch_, or the amylaceous fecula, forms the most valuable part of all the materials used for making bread, and its substitutes.
This substance forms by far the most abundant, the most nourishing, and the most easy to be procured aliment, obtainable from the vegetable kingdom.
“Whilst immense tribes of creatures devour the amylaceous fecula in the grain, as nature produces it, man knows how to give it different forms, from the most simple boiling to the most complicated delicacies of the arts of the confectioner and pastry-cook.
“It is singular that man should waste so valuable a substance for the purpose of hair-powder, a kind of custom perhaps ridiculous, in which modern nations imitate, without being aware of it, those people whom they term barbarous, and by which custom they lavish away a portion of the subsistence of a great number of families.”
This nutritive aliment, we find, exists in various combinations, in the roots, seeds, in the stems, and fruits of plants. Many roots abounding in the amylaceous fecula, yields a palatable and highly nutritious aliment.
Hence the potatoe is a substance largely employed as a substitute for bread. Its nutritious qualities are fully ascertained by the experience of all Europe; it makes a considerable portion of the food of the poor; and in Ireland in particular, millions of people exist, who, from sufficient evidence, we are pretty certain live for years together almost wholly on this root and water, without any other seasoning than a little salt. It contains much amylaceous fecula, and when mixed with wheaten flour, may be formed into good and palatable bread. Other substances, besides the grains before mentioned, are in different parts of the world substituted for bread. These are the following:
The Bread-Fruit.
The Bread-fruit Tree (_Artocarpus incisa_) affords the inhabitants of the South Pacific Ocean a substance resembling bread. They only climb the tree to gather the fruit, which is of a round shape, from five to six inches in diameter; it grows on boughs like apples, and, when quite ripe, is of a yellowish colour. The bread-fruit has a tough reticulated rind; there is neither seed nor stone in the inside of it. The eatable part, which lies between the skin and the core, is as white as snow, and of the consistence of new bread. The fruit is roasted on embers, or baked in an oven, which scorches the rind and turns it black; this is rasped off, and there remains a thin white crust, while the inside is soft and white, like crumbs of fine loaf-bread. It is eaten new, for if it is kept longer than twenty-four hours, it becomes harsh and unpalatable. It is also boiled, by which means the interior is rendered white, like a boiled potatoe. They make three dishes of it, by putting either water or the milk of the cocoa-nut to it, then beating it into a paste with a stone pestle, and afterwards mixing it with banana paste, which has been suffered to become sour.
The bread-fruit remains in season eight months in the year, during which time the natives eat no other sort of food of the bread kind; and the deficiency of the other four months of the year, is made up chiefly with cocoa-nuts, bananas, plantains, bread nuts (_brosimum alicastrum_), and other farinaceous fruits.
Sago Bread.
The Sago-Tree (_Cycas Circinalis_), which grows spontaneously in the East Indies, and particularly on the Coast of Malabar, furnishes to numerous Indian tribes their bread. In the Islands of Banda and Amboyna, they saw the body of the tree into small pieces, and, after bruising and beating them in a mortar, pour water upon the fragments; this is left for some hours undisturbed, to suffer the pithy farinaceous matter to subside. The water is then poured off, and the meal, being properly dried, is formed into cakes, or fermented and made into bread, which, it is said, eats nearly as well as wheaten bread.
The Hottentots make a kind of bread of another species of sago-tree (_Cycas Resoluta_). The pith, or medulla, which abounds in the trunk of this little palm, is collected and tied up in dressed calf’s or sheep’s skin, and then buried in the ground for several weeks, which renders it mellow and tender. It is then kneaded with water into dough, and made into small loaves or cakes, which are baked under embers. Other Hottentots, not quite so nice, merely dry and roast the farinaceous pith, and afterwards make it into a kind of frumety or porridge.
SAGO.
The same meal, or medulla, of the sago-tree, reduced into grain, by passing it whilst still moist through a kind of sieve, produces the _sago_ of commerce, which receives its brown colour by being heated on hot stones.
Casava Bread.
In the Caribbee Islands they make bread of a very poisonous root (_Jatropa Maniat_), rendered wholesome by the extraction of its acrid juice, which the Indians use for poisoning their arrows. A tea-spoonful of the juice is sufficient to poison a man.
The root of the maniat, after being crashed, scraped clean, and grated in a tub, is enclosed in a sack of rushes, of very loose texture, which is suspended upon a stick placed upon two wooden forks. To the bottom of this sack a heavy vessel is suspended, which, by drawing the sack, presses the grated root and receives the juice that flows out of it. When the starch is well exhausted of its juice, it is exposed to smoke in order to dry it; and when well dried it is passed through a sieve. In this state it is termed Casava. It is baked into cakes, by spreading it on hot plates of iron or earth, turning it on both sides, in order to give it a good reddish colour.
TAPIOCA.
The article of commerce, called _tapioca_, is the finest part of the farinaceous pith of the casava. It is separately collected and formed into small tears, by straining the mass while still moist, to form it into small irregular lumps.
Plantain Bread.
The Plantain Tree (_Musa Paradisiaca_), which is a native of the East Indies and other parts of the Asiatic Continent, furnishes the inhabitants with a species of bread. The fruit of the plantain-tree is about a foot long, and from an inch and a half to two inches in diameter. It is at first green, but when ripe of a pale yellow. It has a tough skin, and within is a soft pulp of a sweet flavour. The fruit is generally cut before it is ripe; the green skin is peeled off, and the heart is roasted in a clear coal fire for a few minutes, and frequently turned; it is then scraped and served up as bread. This tree is cultivated on an extensive scale in Jamaica. Without this fruit, Dr. Wright says, the Islands would be scarcely inhabitable, as no species of provisions could supply its place. Even flour and bread itself would be less agreeable to the labouring Negro.
Banana Bread.
The fruit of the Banana Tree (_Musa Sapientum_), differs from the preceding, being shorter, straighter, and rounder. It is about four or five inches long, of the shape of a cucumber, and of a highly grateful flavour. Bananas grow in bunches that weigh twelve pounds and upwards. This fruit yields a softer pulp than the plantain-tree, and of a more luscious taste. It is never eaten green, but when ripe is a very pleasant food, either raw or fried in slices like fritters. It is relished by all ranks of people in the West Indies. When the natives of the West Indies undertake a voyage, they take the ripe fruit of the banana and make provisions of the paste; and, having squeezed it through a sieve, form the mass into loaves, which are dried in the sun or baked on hot ashes, after being previously wrapped up in leaves.
Bread of Dried Fish.
The Laplanders, who have no corn of their own, make a kind of bread of the inner soft bark of a pine tree, either mixed with the coarsest barley meal, or with dried fish beaten into powder. The bark is collected when the sap is rising, it is afterwards dried in the sun, or over a slow fire, and then mixed with the coarsest barley meal, or dried fish beaten into powder. The poorer people grind the chaff, and even some of the straw along with the barley.
Another kind of bread is made of dried fish and the root of the water dragon (_Calla palustris_), the root is taken up in the spring, before the leaves shoot out. It is dried, pounded, and boiled, till it becomes thick, like flummery, and after standing three or four days to lose its bitterness it is mixed with the powder of dried fish and the inner bark of the pine tree, and then made into a stiff paste, and baked over embers.
Bread made of Moss.
Some species of the tribe of Lichen, contain a considerable portion of starch, as the _Lichen Rangiferinus_, or rein-deer moss, which affords food to the stags and other fallow cattle of the North of Europe. The Icelanders form the lichen islandicus into bread, which is found to be extremely nutritious. The moss is collected in the summer, and, when dry, ground into powder, of which bread and gruel, or pottage, are made. It is sometimes also put whole into broth, or is boiled in whey, till it be converted into a jelly. In general, it is either previously steeped for some hours in warm water, or the water of the first boiling is rejected, in order to remove a part of the bitter extractive matter, which, if left, produces a disagreeable taste, and is apt to prove purgative.
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 time. A similar earth is met with near Genomu, in Catalonia.
In the western parts of Luisania too, the inhabitants have a most extraordinary custom of eating a white earth, mixed with clay and salt.
The rowers also, who ply on the river Mississippi, frequently drink large quantities of muddy water, which cannot fail to leave in the stomach a considerable quantity of earth. But it cannot be doubted, that a large quantity of earthy substances taken into the stomach would prove deleterious to health.
Analysis of Bread Flour.
On examining bread corn, for instance wheat, we perceive an outside coating, which after the grain has been soaked in water, may readily be peeled off. This forms the bran of the flour. Immediately under it, is that part of the grain which affords the coarsest flour, it is soft to the touch, and not easily reduced to an impalpable powder, and of a sweetish taste. This constitutes about one half of the grain. Underneath this substance lies what is called by millers, the kernel or heart of the wheat, namely, a hard mealy substance, almost transparent. This part of the grain is capable of being speedily reduced to an impalpable powder, it ferments more readily than the outer layers, and it is this which produces the finest and best kind of wheaten flour. Such is the mechanical constitution of the grain. When chemically examined we find that the flour of wheat, rye, and barley, is composed of three ingredients, or immediate constituent parts, which may be separated by simple processes, viz. starch, gluten, and saccharine mucilage. The proportion of these differ materially in different kinds of corn. The method of separating them is as follows:
Make any quantity of wheaten flour into a stiff paste with cold water, and let it be kneaded and wrought in the hands under water; or put the flour into a coarse linen bag, and knead it between the hands whilst a small rill of cold water is suffered to pass over it. The water will carry away the starch in the form of a white powder, and the dough become more and more elastic, in proportion as the water carries off the starch; continue kneading the mass till the water runs off from the kneaded dough colourless. It will also be observed, that in proportion as the water carries off the starch, the paste in the bag assumes a more grey colour, less brilliant, as it were semi-transparent, and of a softer consistence, but, at the same time, more tenaceous, more viscid, more gluey, and more elastic.
Thus the flour is separated into three substances, by a method incapable of decomposing or altering any of its immediate constituent parts. The starch is precipitated in a white powder at the bottom of the water, from which it may readily be separated by suffering it to subside, and the supernatant liquid, contains in solution the saccharine mucilage; this may be obtained in the form of a syrup, by evaporating slowly in a warm place the clear decanted fluid; and the third substance, the gluten, remains in the bag, in the state of a soft, cohesive, and elastic substance.
In a similar manner the analysis of any species of bread corn may be effected.
QUANTITY OF FLOUR OBTAINABLE FROM VARIOUS KINDS OF CEREAL AND LEGUMINOUS SEEDS EMPLOYED IN THE FABRICATION OF BREAD, AND DIFFERENT KINDS OF FLOUR MANUFACTURED FROM WHEAT.
The Board of Agriculture, in order to ascertain what each of the various sorts of grain employed as substitutes for bread-corn would produce, when ground into flour, with only the broad bran taken out, caused a bushel of each of the undermentioned sorts of seeds to be ground for their inspection: the weight of the grain, as well as the bran and the flour, was as follows:
Weight Weight
Weighed. of Flour. of Bran.
_One Bushel of_ _lb._ _lb._ _lb._ _oz._ _oz._
Barley 46 38 10½ 5 10½
Buckwheat 46¼ 38 9 5 5
Rye 54 43 0 9 5½
Maize 53 44 0 8 10½
Rice 61¼ 60 5 0 0
Oats 38¼ 23 5 13 10½
Beans 57¾ 43 5½ 12 5
Pease 61¾ 47 0 12 5
A bushel of wheat, upon an average, weighs sixty-one pounds; when ground, the meal weighs 60¾ lbs.; this on being dressed, produces 46¾ lbs. of flour of the sort called _seconds_, which alone is used for the making of bread in London, and throughout the greater part of this country; and of pollard and bran 12¾ lbs., which quantity, when bolted, produces 3 lbs. of fine flour; this when sifted produces in good second flour 1¼ lb.
lbs.
The whole quantity of 48 bread-flour obtained from the bushel of wheat, weighs
lbs.
Fine pollard 4¼
Coarse pollard 4 11
Bran 2¾
—
The whole together 59
To which add the loss of 2 weight in manufacturing the bushel of wheat
—
Produces the original weight 61
REASON WHY OATS, PEASE, BEANS, RICE, MAIZE, MILLET, BUCKWHEAT, AND OTHER NUTRITIVE GRAINS CANNOT BE MADE INTO LIGHT AND POROUS BREAD.
Every person is acquainted with the difference there is between light well fermented bread, and that which is sodden, heavy, and badly risen, and the decided preference given to the former over the latter, as the most palatable, and easy of digestion.
The only substances for making _loaf bread_, by which term is meant, bread which is light, white, and porous, is the flour of wheat; and it is to the larger quantity of gluten, that wheat flour owes the property of being converted into loaf-bread. The average quantity of gluten contained in wheat flour, amounts to about one-fifth of the whole weight of the meal; but it varies in quantity in different kinds of wheat, according to the soil and season in which the corn has been reared, culture, and various other circumstances. Wheat kept in damp storehouses affords scarcely any gluten, and hence, in proportion as the flour of wheat is altered and deteriorated, which happens, as it is known, when it is kept too much compressed, without being occasionally stirred up and aired in hot and close granaries; in a word, as it undergoes a chemical change, its property of making good bread is diminished; and chemical analysis shows the quantity of gluten has become lessened under such circumstances; and when it is greatly diminished the meal forms no longer a tenaceous ductile dough. The spoiled flour produces a kind of bread which is heavy, harsh, and difficult of digestion.
The greater the proportion of gluten, the easier the panification of bread-flour is effected, and the better is the bread. The wheat of the South of Europe generally contains a larger quantity of gluten, and is therefore more excellent for the manufacture of Maccaroni, Vermicelli, and other alimentary substances, requiring a glutenous paste.
Sir H. Davy found the flour of the wheat of this country to consist of from twenty to twenty-four per cent. of gluten. Barley contains six, and rye five per cent. of gluten.
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, heavy, insipid cakes, when made into dough and baked, and not light porous loaf-bread.
In further confirmation of this statement it may be remarked, that if gluten of wheat, or only a portion of wheaten flour be incorporated by kneading with the before-named kinds of flour, a fermentable cohesive paste is produced, from which perfect bread may be made.
THEORY OF THE PANIFICATION OF BREAD FLOUR.
Bread, when chemically examined, is very different from flour; it no longer forms with water a tenaceous ductile mass, nor can starch, gluten, and saccharine mucilage be separated from it.