BAKERS’ DIFFICULTIES.
All this was the cause of much worry to bakers. They had been accustomed to the manufacture of bread from flour the quality of which was well known and regulated with almost scientific accuracy, but under the new order of things they found the knowledge which they had acquired laboriously over a long period of years almost useless to them. So long as they were dealing with wheat flour, even if that flour did contain a large proportion of offal which had formerly been used to feed cattle, the position was not quite so bad, for most of them had been in the habit of baking a greater or lesser proportion of what was termed “wheaten” and “wholemeal” bread. But when flour produced from rye, barley, and even maize had to be added their troubles began, for only by chemical analysis was it possible for them to determine the proportions in which the various cereals were used, and these proportions were varied arbitrarily week by week at the whim of the Wheat Commission authorities; while the millers were absolutely prohibited from giving any information on the subject. Thus, when after a series of experiments they had ascertained the method by which they could produce the best loaf from a given flour, they suddenly discovered that the mixture had been altered, and that their experiments had to begin all over again; and this continued to be the position for some time even after the end of the war.