Bread
a preparation of flour baked for food. Well made bread is one of the most nutritious of foods. It contains so nearly all the ingredients required by the human body that, in case of need, a person can live on bread and water without loss of health. The simplest bread is made of flour mixed with water and baked. Ship's biscuit is made in this way. It keeps well, but it is as hard almost as flint, and tries a sailor's teeth severely. Unleavened bread is mentioned in the Scriptures. Hoecake or cornbread and oatmeal bannocks are made in much the same way, but the baker has learned to make better bread from wheat flour. For an account of the way in which bread is made light and spongy, the reader is referred to the article on YEAST.
It has been found that the loss of food by the conversion of sugar into gas and into alcohol, and their subsequent expulsion in baking, amounts, according to one authority, to seven loaves out of one hundred and seven. To save this loss, experiments have been made to secure lightness and elasticity by forcing air into the dough. Bread made in this way, without being set and raised with yeast, is called aerated bread. It is a very attractive, wholesome sort of bread, but it lacks the taste and permanent popularity of yeast-raised bread. Baking powders for the purpose of raising bread are all made on the general plan of a harmless chemical compound in the form of a powder that may be mixed with flour, and that will generate a quantity of gas when wet in the dough and subjected to the heat of baking. Cream of tartar and saleratus or baking soda are varieties well known to the house-keeper. They do not produce as light biscuit as yeast, but they are quicker in action.
A long controversy as to the comparative nutritive value of white bread, brown bread, graham, and the like appears to have been decided in favor of white bread. Some coarse breads like graham, named for an eminent physician. of London, are more easily digested perhaps than others, but, so far as strength and health are concerned, the choice of bread may be left to each person's own liking. Fresh bread is not so digestible as stale bread, because it is too moist to absorb saliva and other digestive fluids. Crust and toast are dryer and are digested in less time than crumb; white bread in less time than black; and biscuit in less time than loaf bread. Good bread should have left the stomach in from two to three hours. About three-fourths of the bulk of loaf bread is gas or air. About one-third of its weight is water. Weight for weight, bread contains more food than meat. According to current prices in large cities as New York and London, it has been found that money will buy more food in the form of wheaten bread, penny for penny, than in meat, fish, vegetables, or other articles offered in the markets, unless, indeed, exceptions be made in favor of beans and of oatmeal, which authorities recognize as among the most nutritious foods available.
A new milling bakery has been erected in London. It is designed to cheapen the cost of making bread. Clean wheat enters at one end; hot loaves appear at the other. Grinding, sifting, weighing, kneading, the placing of dough in pans, the transfer to electrical ovens, and all other details are managed by machinery. The capacity is 300,000 loaves a day.