BREAD, CAKES,
AND
BISCUITS.
CHAPTER I.
BREAD.
AMONGST the subjects needing attention in the kitchens of
this country, few deserve it better than bread. It must be
admitted sorrowfully that, taken as a whole, both the
British housewife and her cook are extravagant and
ignorant. In most cases it may be also freely conceded
that the former fault is the outcome of the latter; we do
not know how to make the best of the materials we have to
deal with, and, consequently, frequently fail in obtaining
their full value. It is safe to say that in most households
the waste of bread is something almost incredible, and,
strange to say, the lower in the social scale usually the
greater is the waste. One factor in this is the universal
craze for white bread. Now, pure white flour is delicate, of
course, but to obtain the purity of its colour a good deal of its
nutritive value has had to be eliminated under the most
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2 BREAD, CAKES, AND BISCUITS.
favourable circumstances, whilst under unfavourable ones
various more or less harmless additions are made to inferior
flour to bring it to the fineness of texture and delicacy of
appearance required. Taken at their best these adultera-
tions spell waste, for the buyer is paying for a superior
article, and only getting one of inferior quality all round;
and one which, moreover, will very likely upset all one's
arrangements, for recipes based on the use of the best
materials will not work out correctly when inferior stuff is
used, and to this fact many culinary failures are due. But
granted this is the worst of harmless adulteration, adul-
teration of a less innocuous kind leads to far more serious
trouble, so much so in fact that the bread supply and its
purity and quality are points it behoves every mother to
study pretty closely.
There are divers kinds of flour (beginning at the top of
the scale), from the delicate Hungarian or Vienna flour,
and "best pastry whites" (as the very whitest and lightest
flour is called in this country), down through "seconds" or
"household," to wholemeal and bran flour. Now, granted
that these are all pure, they all have their uses. The first
kinds are used for pastry, delicate cakes, and other articles
more valued as tempting to the palate than for their
nutritious properties; for bread, "household" or "seconds"
flour is far more wholesome, containing as it does a great
deal of the bran, or "middlings," as it is technically called,
which is really of importance from an hygienic point of
view. Lastly, there was a rough kind of flour produced by
grinding up the wheat entirely, husk, bran, and corn, just
as it came, but this produced too rough a flour to suit
modern taste and its use has been gradually aban-
doned, until improvements brought in, as a substitute,
the well known "wholemeal" flour, which consists of
coarsely ground wheat from which only the very coarsest
parts of the husk have been omitted. Ordinary brown
bread is usually made from this, though sometimes seconds
BREAD. 3
are mixed with a certain proportion of actual coarse bran.
This bread, though not always found perfectly digestible,
has yet a very decided medical value, and is often recom-
mended by doctors as a useful change. It is considered a
valuable assistant in cases of constipation. (Besides these
there are "bran bread" (made by mixing certain propor-
tions of bran with good and rather fine wheatmeal), Hovis
(sometimes called "germ" bread), Berma'line, Cytos, and
innumerable other brands of bread, the foundation of which
is the varying preparation of the meal, more or less of the
bran, pollard, etc., having been left in or added to the fine
flour.) As against this opinion it is, however, fair to add
that some noted authorities on the chemistry of baking are
by no means so favourably impressed by the value of these
wholemeal or blended flours, which they assert do not keep
so well as bread made from pure white flour will do, becom-
ing heavy, "sad," indigestible, and even musty from
keeping. But having put both sides of the question forward
it may be safely asserted that, whatever the flour used, home-
made bread is, as a rule, both nicer to the palate and more
digestible than the average baker's bread, and that the
absolute purity of the flour, being unfortunately very diffi-
cult of attainment, is more likely to be obtained in the
ordinary "seconds" than in the super-whitened flour, which
is somewhat apt to owe a good deal of its purity to art
rather than to nature. That really good bought bread cannot
be obtained I by no means assert, for there are well-known
bakers whose bread is widely renowned for its excellence,
both of flavour and keeping powers; but those accustomed
to such bread will allow that its use indisposes one to the
enjoyment of bread made by less conscientious and capable
bakers. In this I speak from experience, having for years
gone to one bakery when in town, and having found that
bread procured elsewhere, in the country, etc., was notice-
ably different and less palatable. Home-made bread has at
all events the merit of relative purity, for you know pretty
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4 BREAD, CAKES, AND BISCUITS.
exactly what you put into it. A little experience soon
teaches one to discern the quality of flour. Of colour it is,
of course, easy enough to judge, for brown flour argues the
presence of some portion of the bran, and if this admixture is
denied by the seller then the flour is made from inferior
wheat. From these alternatives there is no getting away.
To test its quality take a good pinch between your finger
and thumb and press it well together. If the flour feels
light and loose it is good. If there is the slightest touch of
lumpiness or clamminess, reject it; it is not in good order.
Remember flour should always be at least a week or two old
before it is used, but longer if possible.
Adulteration at one time was almost universal in bakery;
usually it must be conceded, however, that the foreign
substances, added to increase the bulk and diminish the
cost of bread production, were innocuous enough, their chief
fault being that they reduced the nutritive value of the
flour; and when eating, and paying for what we believe to
be pure bread made from wheat flour, it is small consolation
to know that the raw or cooked potato, beetroot, or turnip
pulp, dextrine (potato starch), or rice added to it, are really
harmless ingredients. Of alum, used largely at one time
for whitening and improving (?) the keeping power of
bread, one cannot say even so much. However the law of
adulteration, now generally and strictly enforced, has
rendered the use of these substances too costly in actual
money, and too ruinous in reputation, for any decent miller
or baker to adopt them, so that in dealing with an honest
tradesman of good reputation one is fairly certain of
obtaining bread made from flour, at all events. But in
this, as in every case, fair value has to be paid for quality,
and the housewife who gives herself up to the fetish of
"cheapness" (at all costs) must make up her mind to the
fact that, if she will not pay with her purse she will with
her person, or, worse still, the persons of her children and
household.
BREAD. 5
Breadmaking is an art that should, theoretically, be
possessed by every woman, though its practice need not be
always incumbent upon her. At the same time, in these
days, when we all wander so much, it were well for every
woman, whatever her status, to have a working knowledge
of the matter. It may be added that anæmia, a disease
which has increased so largely of late years, in the country
especially, is by many doctors freely attributed to the
decline of home baking, and the consequent use of the
baker's bread; for which amongst working people, as a rule,
the sole test of purity is its whiteness, due in only too
many cases to an excessive use of alum.
The use of alum, especially as an ingredient in bread, has,
for a very long series of years been declared illegal, and the
bakers employing it can, if detected, be severely fined. Its
employment was formerly defended by the bakers on the
ground that it rendered certain flours, which could not be
used under ordinary circumstances, fit for food. Wheat
harvested in wet seasons, when the grain is exposed to much
atmospheric moisture, yields a flour which cannot be used
advantageously; the bread made from it becomes sticky
and glutinous when masticated, adhering to the teeth, and
being objectionable not only on the ground of taste, but of
indigestibility. A small portion of alum added to the water
with which such bread is made obviates this defect, and
thus enables the baker to use cheaper and inferior flour than
he otherwise could do, hence its use was formerly very
general. Heavy penalties were, it is true, incurred by its
use, so alum was seldom kept on the baker's premises, and
before each baking the journeyman used to go to the
nearest chemist's and purchase a pound of "stuff"—the
technical name under which alum was sold.
Used in baking powder, alum serves a totally different
purpose. The most essential ingredient in baking powder
is carbonate, or, as it should be called, bicarbonate of soda,
which contains with the alkali a very large quantity of
6 BREAD, CAKES, AND BISCUITS.
carbonic acid gas. If this be liberated, by the addition of
any stronger acid which removes the soda, the gas is dis-
engaged, as may be seen by dissolving an effervescing
powder. Should this disengagement take place in the
substance of the tenacious and adhesive dough produced
when wheat flour is mixed with water, the bubbles of gas
so liberated are retained, and, distending the dough, pro-
duce a light bread. The best means of liberating this gas
is the addition of tartaric acid, which forms with the soda
a dry powder, the ingredients of which do not react upon
one another until wetted, so that, if the mixture be stirred
in the flour and then moistened, the carbonic acid gas is
entangled in the dough. But as alum also contains a large
proportion of acid, and when mixed with carbonate of soda
causes effervescence, so, as it is only a fraction of the cost
of tartaric acid, it has been used to a very large extent as a
substitute for the latter in making baking powder.
The question whether such employment of alum is, or is
not, legal has at last been decided in the Court of Queen's
Bench, after some years' litigation, the question raised
being whether baking powder is, or is not, an article of
food coming within the scope of the Act of Parliament
regulating the adulteration of food and drugs. It was
decided that baking powder not being an article of food,
the employment of injurious substances in it does not
entail any penalty on the makers. The decision was a
perfectly legal one on the following grounds: that the sale
of alum is not an offence, and that the small quantity of
ground rice or other starchy ingredient in baking powders
made with alum does not convert them into food. It is
true that the purchaser of baking powder, if he mixes it
with food and then sells the food, does commit an offence,
but legally the vendor of the powder does not. The
question turned entirely on the legal point whether baking
powder was, or was not, to be considered as food, which alone
would bring it within the scope of the Act of Parliament.
BREAD. 7
The decision is unfortunate, because it is generally
admitted, and was so even in the evidence on the present
case, that alum in food is injurious. It decomposes when
heated in connection with flour, and its addition acts inju-
riously upon the latter, rendering it indigestible. It seems
a legal absurdity to regard pepper, mustard, and salt as
foods and to prevent their adulteration, and yet to regard
baking powder not as a food, so that it may be adulterated
to any extent. The Food and Drugs Act is badly worded,
and requires considerable alteration to prevent the occur-
rence of such contradictions, there being in the Act a pro-
vision against the use of alum in bread, but none against
its use in baking powder.
But be this as it may, even if only for a change, it were
well if home bakery were at all events occasionally resorted
to; and it would be doubtless, but for the queer sort of
superstition regarding the difficulty and labour of bread-
making that has grown up since the art died out of general
use. You are referred to statistics to show how laborious
is the life of a baker, and how unhealthy its circum-
stances; but people who make these assertions forget the
difference there is between baking a batch of bread for one
family occasionally in a light, airy, clean kitchen, and the
incessant labour of the half a score of men who, frequently
under most insanitary conditions, have to supply the wants
of several hundreds of families with bread and pastry of
all kinds. Granted that in large bakeries the number of
assistants is greater, but then so also is the number of
families to be supplied. It is quite on the cards that, if
in a generation or two public kitchens (that Utopia of the
harassed or incompetent housewife) become the rule, our
descendants may find it as hard to get the humble chop
cooked at home as we do now the making of bread.
The requisites for home bakery are neither numerous nor
costly, though, of course, if the demand is large, the supply
of such properties will have to be in proportion, but the