Chemistry shows no great difference in the percentage of albuminoids in wheat and corn, but it is a fact that all the differences can not be set down in figures. The housewife knows very well that a light, spongy bread is not easily made from corn; in other words, corn bread is very different in texture from wheat bread, even when the two flours are equally well prepared. Much may be due to the greater amount of oil in the corn, but there is little doubt that the gluten of corn is of a different texture or character than that in wheat. This most important constituent is subject to great variation in wheat, so much so that this grain grown in one locality makes a light bread, while that from another, in the same hands and under the same treatment, yields a heavy bread, and of poor quality. No one doubts that much improvement may be made in the milling of corn—as much, perhaps, as has been recently effected in that of wheat. We may look for a “new process” by which our corn bread may be vastly improved.
Corn is, however, the great fattening food for swine and other live stock, and we should be satisfied to take our corn in that transmuted form when it appears upon our tables as a fragrant spare-rib or a juicy and tender chop or beefsteak.
Of the three grains herein briefly treated we have seen that wheat stands at the head as a food for man in our country. In any form it is prepared it can be a complete and palatable food. The albuminoids (gluten, etc.) are in such abundance and form that the flour may produce snowy, spongy and most healthful bread—truly a staff of life on which all rejoice to lean. Rye is a declining grain, it being replaced by wheat. It will grow on poorer soil than wheat, but with the many kinds of commercial fertilizers at our service no one should grow rye because of an impoverished soil. Corn in all its bearings is a peer of wheat. It is in one sense our contribution to the world’s list of grains, and in this we justly take pride. It is more largely grown than any other crop, and as a source of natural wealth it stands ahead of wheat. As a plant corn is most interesting, being plastic and quickly responsive to any favoring conditions. If corn is king, as some claim, wheat is certainly queen in this royal family of cereals.
BREAD.
BY MRS. EMMA P. EWING.
The first thing to be considered in bread making is the yeast. Without good yeast it is impossible to make good bread. A great deal depends upon the quality of flour used for making bread; but unless the yeast is good the best quality of bread can not be made from the most superior grade of flour, and much excellent flour is spoiled by conjunction with worthless yeast in the attempt to make it into bread.
The compressed yeast, so much used in cities, is, in all respects, the best commercial yeast yet discovered, and when fresh, is perfectly reliable, but can not be obtained conveniently at all times, and in all places. And the housewife who is ambitious to supply her family with good bread should acquaint herself with the best method of making yeast, and have it prepared at home.