Part 3
The chemical changes that take place in the panification of bread-flour, are by no means well understood. The saccharine mucilage, it appears, commences the fermentative chemical action that takes place in the dough, for without this substance, a mixture of flour, yeast, and water, cannot be made into true bread. The fermenting process when once commenced, is kept up by the gluten, forming the body of the paste through which the fecula and saccharine matter are diffused; and when the slight fermentation which it suffers, from changes in the saccharine matter, and supported by the presence of the gluten, has commenced, the paste becomes spongy and porous, from the disengagement of carbonic acid gas, while it still retains in some measure its elasticity; hence the lightness and porosity of well-baked wheaten bread; and hence bread, possessing these qualities, cannot be prepared from the flour of oats, barley, rye, or rice, or from any of the nutritive roots, as in all of these the quantity of gluten is considerably less, or entirely wanting, and no gluey elastic dough can be formed. The starch, which was merely diffused through the gluey dough, combines, during the baking, with a portion of water, into a stiff jelly, which renders the bread more digestible, and the gluten wholly disappears. A portion of carbonic acid gas, which becomes disengaged during the fermenting process, enlarges the bulk of the dough, which is thus rendered light, porous, and full of eyes, or cavities, in consequence of the extraction of the air bubbles, in the viscid glutenous matter; and the porosity of the bread is in proportion to the extent to which the rising of the dough is suffered to proceed.
Some chemists persuade themselves that the fermentation of the flour dough differs materially from the fermentation of saccharine substances; namely, that the vinous, acetous, and putrefactive stages of the fermenting process take place simultaneously in the dough. They imagine the vinous fermentation to take place in the saccharine mucilage, the acetous in the starch, and the putrefactive in the gluten at the same time, and from the modification of each by the others, they consider that peculiar action to originate which converts paste into bread. Against this opinion, however, the following objections may be urged. In the first place, the quantity of saccharine mucilage is so extremely small as to produce no sensible effect alone on the whole mass, and what little there is probably passes speedily into the acetous fermentation. Secondly, the temperature that is required for bread-making is considerably lower than that at which starch dissolves in water, and where this is the case no alteration will take place, even in a long course of time: this is clearly shown by the usual process of starch-making, in which the bruised wheat is fermented for several days in large vats, in order to destroy the gluten, after which the starch is procured by simple deposition from the washings of the residue; and thirdly, no vestige whatever of the products evolved during the putrefactive fermentation of gluten, can be traced in any stage of the panification of bread flour.
Unleavened Bread.
Bread prepared by baking from the meal of farinaceous seeds kneaded with water into a dough and baked, is divided into three sorts, namely;—1. Unleavened bread; 2. Leavened bread; and, 3. Bread made with yeast.
Unleavened bread contains all the component parts of the flour but little altered. The meal is simply mixed with water, and baked into cakes. It is heavy, dry, friable, and not porous. The oatmeal bread of Scotland, is unleavened bread; as also sea biscuit, and all other kinds of biscuit.
The bread that is eaten by the Jews during the passover is unleavened. The usage of which was introduced in commemoration of their hasty departure from Egypt, [Exodus, chap. 12, v. 14 to 17.] when they had not leisure to bake leavened bread, but took the dough before it was fermented and baked unleavened cakes.
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.
To make Oatmeal Cakes.
To a peck of oatmeal add a few table-spoonsful of salt; knead the mixture into a stiff paste, with warm water, roll it out into thin cakes, and bake it in an oven or on embers.
In some cottages oatmeal bread undergoes a partial fermentation, whereby it is rendered lighter; but the generality of the people in the more humble walks of life, where oatmeal bread is eaten, merely soften their oatmeal with water, and having added to it a little salt, bake it into cakes. To strangers oatmeal bread has a dry, harsh, unpleasant taste, but the cottagers of Scotland, in particular, most commonly prefer it to wheaten bread.
Mixed Oatmeal and Pease Bread.
To a peck of pease flour, and a like quantity of oatmeal, previously mixed by passing the flour through a sieve, add three or four ounces of salt, knead it into a stiff mass with warm water, roll it out into thin cakes, and bake them in an oven. In some parts of Lancashire and Scotland, this kind of bread is made into flattened rolls, and the cottagers usually bake them in an iron pot.
In Norway they make unleavened bread of oatmeal and barley, which keeps thirty or forty years, and is considered the better for being old, so that at the baptism of a child, bread is sometimes used which has been baked perhaps at the baptism of its great grandfather.
Unleavened Maize Bread.
The bread made of maize flour, which is in common use in North America, is unleavened bread. The maize flour is kneaded with a little salt and water into a stiff mass; which, after being rolled out into thin cakes, is usually baked on a hot broad iron hoe.
Another kind of unleavened _maize cakes_, which is a North American bread, called _Hoe cake_, is made in the following manner.[3]
Take maize, boil it with a small proportion of kidney beans, until it becomes almost a pulp, and bake it over embers into a cake.
Footnote 3:
This and several other of the directions here given, for making various species of bread, are taken from Edlin’s excellent Treatise on bread making, a small work, long ago out of print.
Unleavened Bean-Flour Bread.
Take a quarter of a peck of bean-flour and one ounce of salt, mix it into a thick batter with water, pour a sufficient quantity to make a cake into an iron kettle, and bake it over the fire, taking care to turn it frequently.
Unleavened Buckwheat Bread.[4]
Footnote 4:
From the Reports of the Board of Agriculture.
Take a gallon of water, set it over a fire, and when it boils, let a peck of the flour of buckwheat be mixed with it, little by little, and keep the mixture constantly stirred, to prevent any lumps being formed till a thick batter is made. Then add two or three ounces of salt, set it over the fire again, and allow it to boil an hour and a half, pour the proper proportion for a cake into an iron kettle and bake it.
Unleavened Acorn Bread.
Take acorns, fully ripe, deprive them of their covers and beat them into a paste, let them lay in water for a night, and then press the water from them, which deprives the acorns entirely of their astringency. Then dry and powder the mass for use. When wanted, knead it up into a dough with water, and roll it out into thin cakes, which may be baked over embers.
Bread made after this method is by no means disagreeable, and even to this day, it is said to be made use of in some countries.
Sea Biscuit.
The process of biscuit-baking for the British navy is as follows, and it is equally simple and ingenious. The meal, and every other article, being supplied with much certainty and simplicity, large lumps of dough, consisting merely of flour and water, are mixed up together; and as the quantity is so immense as to preclude, by any common process, a possibility of kneading it, a man manages, or, as it is termed, rides a machine, which is called a horse. This machine is a long roller, apparently about four or five inches in diameter, and about seven or eight feet in length. It has a play to a certain extension, by means of a staple in the wall, to which is inserted a kind of eye, making its action like the machine by which they cut chaff for horses. The lump of dough being placed exactly in the centre of a raised platform, the man sits upon the end of the machine, and literally rides up and down throughout its whole circular direction, till the dough is equally indented; and this is repeated till it is sufficiently kneaded; at which times, by the different positions of the lines, large or small circles are described, according as they are near to or distant from the wall.
The dough in this state is handed over to a second workman, who slices it with a prodigious knife; and it is then in a proper state for the use of those bakers who attend the oven. These are five in number; and their different departments are as well calculated for expedition and correctness, as the making of pins, or other mechanical employments. On each side of a large table, where the dough is laid, stands a workman; at a small table near the oven stands another; a fourth stands by the side of the oven, to receive the bread; and a fifth to supply the peel. By this arrangement the oven is as regularly filled and the whole exercise performed in as exact time, as a military evolution. The man on the further side of the large table, moulds the dough, having previously formed it into small pieces till it has the appearance of muffins, although rather thinner, and which he does two together, with each hand; and, as fast as he accomplishes this task, he delivers his work over to the man on the other side of the table, who stamps them with a docker on both sides with a mark. As he rids himself of this work, he throws the biscuits on the smaller table next the oven, where stands the third workman, whose business is merely to separate the different pieces into two, and place them immediately under the hand of him who supplies the oven, whose work of throwing, or rather chucking, the bread upon the peel, must be so exact, that if he looked round for a single moment, it is impossible he should perform it correctly. The fifth receives the biscuit on the peel, and arranges it in the oven; in which duty he is so very expert, that though the different pieces are thrown at the rate of seventy in a minute, the peel is always disengaged in time to receive them separately.
As the oven stands open during the whole time of filling it, the biscuits first thrown in would be first baked, were there not some counteraction to such an inconvenience. The remedy lies in the ingenuity of the man who forms the pieces of dough, and who, by imperceptible degrees, proportionably diminishes their size, till the loss of that time, which is taken up during the filling of the oven, has no more effect to the disadvantage of one of the biscuits than to another.
So much critical exactness and neat activity occur in the exercise of this labour, that it is difficult to decide whether the palm of excellence is due to the moulder, the marker, the splitter, the chucker, or the depositor; all of them, like the wheels of a machine, seeming to be actuated by the same principle. The business is to deposit in the oven seventy biscuits in a minute; and this is accomplished with the regularity of a clock; the clack of the peel, during its motion in the oven, operating like the pendulum.
The biscuits thus baked, are dried in lofts over the oven till they are perfectly dry, to prevent them getting mouldy when stored for use.
One-hundred and twelve pounds of flour produce one hundred and two pounds of perfectly dry biscuits.
Leavened Bread,
Or bread made with a portion of fermented sour dough, obtained by keeping some bread dough till the acetous fermentation takes place, when it swells, rarifies, and acquires a taste somewhat sour, and rather disagreeable. This fermented dough is well worked up with some fresh dough, which is, by that mixture and moderate heat, disposed to ferment; and by this fermentation the dough is attenuated and divided, carbonic acid is extricated, which being incapable of disengaging itself from the tenaceous and solid dough, forms it into small cavities, and raises and swells it; hence, the small quantity of fermented dough which disposes the rest of the mass to ferment is called _leaven_.
Most of the bread used by the people in the lower walks of life in France, Germany, Holland, and other European countries, is made in this manner.
Leavened bread, therefore, differs from unleavened bread, in being fermented by means of _leaven_, which is nothing more than a piece of dough kept in a warm place, till it undergoes a process of fermentation, swelling, becoming spongy, and full of air bubbles, and at length disengaging an acidulous vapour, and contracting a sour taste. Leaven must, therefore, be considered as dough which has fermented and become sour, but which is still in its progress towards greater acidity.
The addition of leaven, or this species of ferment to fresh dough, produces an important change in the bread, for when a small portion of leaven is intimately mixed with a large proportion of fresh dough, it gradually causes the whole mass to ferment throughout, a quantity of carbonic acid gas is extracted from the flour, but remaining entangled by the tenacity of the mass in which it is expanded by heat, this raises the dough, and as soon as the mass has acquired a due increase of bulk from the carbonic acid gas which endeavours to escape, it is judged to be sufficiently fermented and fit for the oven, the heat of which, by driving off the water, checks the fermentation, and forms a bread full of small cavities, entirely different from the heavy, compact, viscous masses, made by baking unfermented dough.
A great deal of nicety is required in conducting this operation, for if it is continued too long, the bread will be sour, and if too short a time has been allowed for the dough to ferment and rise, it will be heavy.
Bread raised by leaven is usually made of a mixture of wheat and rye, not very accurately cleared of the bran. It is distinguished by the name of _rye bread_; and the mixture of these two kinds of grain is called bread-corn, in many parts of the kingdom, where it is raised on one and the same piece of ground, and passes through all the processes of reaping, thrashing, grinding, &c. A mixture of one-hundred pounds of equal parts of wheat and rye flour, produce from one-hundred and fifty-four to one-hundred and fifty-six pounds of leavened bread.
Leavened Rye Bread.
Take a piece of dough, of about a pound weight, and keep it for use—it will keep several days very well. Mix this dough with some warm water, and knead it up with a portion of flour to ferment; then take half a bushel of flour, and divide it into four parts; mix a quarter of the flour with the leaven, and a sufficient quantity of water to make it into dough, and knead it well. Let this remain in a corner of your trough, covered with flannel, until it ferments and rises properly; then dilute it with more water, and add another quarter of the flour, and let it remain and rise. Do the same with the other two quarters of the flour, one quarter after another, taking particular care never to mix more flour till the last has risen properly. When finished, add six ounces of salt; then knead it again, and divide it into eight loaves, making them broad, and not so thick and high as is usually done, by which means they will be better baked. Let them remain to rise, in order to overcome the pressure of the hand in forming them; then put them in the oven, and reserve a piece of dough for the next baking. The dough thus kept, may with proper care, be prevented from spoiling, by mixing from time to time small quantities of fresh flour with it.
It requires some attention to be able to determine the exact quantity of leaven necessary for the proper fermentation of the dough. When it is deficient in quantity, the process of fermentation is interrupted, and the bread thus prepared is solid and heavy, and if too much leaven be used, it communicates to the bread a disagreeable sour taste.
Hungarian Rye Bread.
Two large handfuls of hops are boiled in four quarts of water: this is poured upon as much wheaten bread as it will moisten, and to this are added four or five pounds of leaven. When the mass is warm, the several ingredients are worked together till well mixed. It is then deposited in a warm place for twenty-four hours, and afterwards divided into small pieces, about the size of a hen’s egg, which are dried by being placed on a board, and exposed to a dry air, but not to the sun; when dry, they are laid up for use, and may be kept half a year. The ferment, thus prepared, is applied in the following manner: for baking six large loaves, six good handfuls of these balls are dissolved in seven or eight quarts of warm water; this water is poured through a sieve into one end of the bread trough, and after it three quarts of warm water; the remaining mass being well pressed out. The liquor is mixed up with flour, sufficient to form a mass of the size of a large loaf; this is strewed over with flour: the sieve, with its contents, is put upon it, and the whole is covered up warm, and left till it has risen enough, and its surface has begun to crack; this forms the leaven. Fifteen quarts of warm water, in which six handfuls of salt has been dissolved, are then poured upon it through the sieve; the necessary quantity of flour is added, and mixed and kneaded with the leaven: this is covered up warm, and left for about half an hour. It is then formed into loaves, which are kept for another half-hour in a warm room; and after that they are put into the oven, where they remain two or three hours, according to their size.
Bread made with Yeast.
The principal improvement that has been made in the art of fabricating bread, consists in the substitution of yeast, (or the froth that rises to the surface during the fermentation of malt liquors,) instead of common flour dough, in a state of acescency, called _leaven_, to rise the bread dough, made of flour and water, before it is baked. This substance very materially improves the bread. Yeast makes the dough rise more effectually than ordinary _leaven_, and the bread thus produced is much lighter, and free from that sour taste which may often be perceived in bread raised with leaven; because too much has been added to the paste, or because the dough has been allowed to advance too far in the process of fermentation before it was baked.
The discovery of the application of yeast, to improve the panification of bread flour, was made and first secretly adopted by the bakers of Paris; but when the practice was discovered, the College of Physicians there, in 1688, declared it prejudicial to health, and it was not till after a long time that the bakers succeeded in convincing the people, that bread made with yeast was superior to bread made with sour dough or leaven.
The bread used in this metropolis and in most other large towns in England, is made of wheaten flour, water, yeast, and salt. The average proportion are two pints by weight, of water, to three of flour, but the proportions vary considerably with the diversity of climate, years, season, age, and grinding of the wheat. There are some kinds of wheat flour that require precisely three-fourths of their weight of water. That flour is always the best which combines with the greatest possible quantity of water. Bakers and pastry-cooks judge of the quality of flour from the characters of the dough. The best flour forms instantly by the addition of water a very gluey elastic paste, whereas bad flour produces a dough that cannot be elongated without breaking.
The flour, in this case, being seldom mixed up oftener than twice, that is, the yeast previously diluted with water, is added to a part of the flour, and well kneaded; in a short time, swells and rises in the baking trough, and is called by the bakers, _setting the sponge_. The remainder of the flour is afterwards added, with a sufficient quantity of warm water to make it into a stiff dough, and then allowed to ferment. It is of essential consequence that the whole of the yeast should be intimately mixed with the two-thirds of the quantity of the flour put into the kneading trough, in order that the fermentation of the dough may commence in every part of the mass at the same time. The dough is then covered up, and the water which is mixed with the yeast being warm, speedily extricates air in an elastic state, and as it is now by kneading, diffused through every part of the dough, every particle must become raised, and the viscidity of the mass retains it, when it is again well kneaded and made up into loaves, and put into the oven. The heat converts the water also into an elastic vapour, and the loaf swells more and more, till at last it is perfectly porous.
During the baking, a still greater quantity of gazeous matter is extricated by the increased heat; and as the crust of the bread becomes formed, the air is prevented from escaping, the water is dissipated, the loaf rendered somewhat dry and solid, and between every particle of bread there is a particle of air, as appears from the spongy appearance of the bread.
It is curious that new flour does not afford bread of so good a quality as that which has been kept some months. The flour of grain too, which has suffered incipient germination, is much inferior in the quality of bread prepared from it: and from this principally appears to arise the injury which wheat sustains from a wet harvest. Various methods have been employed to remedy the imperfections of bread from inferior flour, such as washing the grain with hot water if it is musty, proposed by Mr. Hatchet;[5] drying and heating it even to a certain extent; adding various substances, such as magnesia, &c. Some experiments on this subject have been given by Mr. E. Davy. See a Treatise on Adulterations of Food, Second Edition, p.137.
Footnote 5:
See a Treatise on Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons, Second Edition, p. 143.
METHOD OF MAKING WHEATEN BREAD, AS PRACTISED BY THE LONDON BAKERS.
To make a sack of flour into bread, the baker pours the flour into the kneading trough, and sifts it through a fine wire sieve, which makes it lie very light, and serves to separate any impurities with which the flour may be mixed. Two ounces of alum are then dissolved in about a quart of boiling water, and the solution (technically called liquor,) is poured into _the seasoning-tub_. Four or five pounds of salt are likewise put into the tub, and a pailful of hot water. When this mixture has cooled to the temperature of about 84°, from three to four pints of yeast are added; the whole is mixed, strained through the seasoning sieve, emptied into a hole made in the mass of the flour, and mixed up with the requisite portion of it to the consistence of a thick batter. Some dry flour is then sprinkled over the top, and it is covered up with sacks or cloths. This operation is called setting _quarter sponge_.