Bread
2 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Bread. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
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. See Wheat ; Yeast 2026 Editor's Note: Two changes the entry could not foresee: bread was industrialized — the Chorleywood process of 1961 lets a modern plant bake a loaf from flour in about three hours, which is how most British bread is now made — and it was sliced. Commercial sliced bread arrived in 1928 and gave English its standard measure of innovation. (Ed: BR 2026-07-16)
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the flour or meal of grain kneaded with water into a tough and consistent paste and baked. There are two kinds of bread, leavened and unleavened. Leavened, or fermented bread, is prepared by mixing together certain quantities of flour, warm water, salt and yeast, or leaven. Leaven, which is now seldom used in this country is a mixture of flour, potatoes and water, kept in a warm place till it begins to ferment. Unleavened, or unfermented, bread, is of two kinds. In the one, flour and water only are used, and this produces a heavy and compact bread. In the other, an acid and a carbonate are added for the purpose of disengaging carbonic acid gas, which, in imitation of yeast, raises the dough and renders the bread light and porous. The substances used are carbonate of ammonia or carbonate of soda, in combination with hydrochloric or tartaric acids. Aerated bread is prepared by forcing pure carbonic acid gas 'nto the dough contained in a strong iron vessel. When this carbonated dough is introduced into the oven the gas expands and escapes, leaving the bread light and porous. Graham bread is ordinary white bread with from 15 to 20 per cent. of fine bran. Whole meal bread, made from unsifted ground wheat, is the only true Graham bread, being richer in nutrients than white bread. The amount of nitrogenous matter in white bread varies from 5 to 8 per cent., while in whole meal bread it rises to 14 per cent. Brown bread is bread made of a mixture of wheaten, or rye flour, an Indian corn meal. It is sometimes sweetened. German cant "Pumpernickel" is a name for schwarzbrod=black bread, made of rye flour and flavored with anise or fennel seeds. It is the common bread of the mass of the German speaking peoples.