The quantity of alum requisite to produce the required whiteness and porosity depends entirely upon the genuineness of the flour, and the quality of the grain from which the flour is obtained. The mealman makes different sorts of flour from the same kind of grain. The best flour is mostly used by the biscuit bakers and pastry cooks, and the inferior sorts in the making of bread. The bakers' flour is very often made of the worst kinds of damaged foreign wheat, and other cereal grains mixed with them in grinding the wheat into flour. In this capital, no fewer than six distinct kinds of wheaten flour are brought into market. They are called fine flour, seconds, middlings, fine middlings, coarse middlings, and twenty-penny flour. Common garden beans, and pease, are also frequently ground up among the London bread flour.
I have been assured by several bakers, on whose testimony I can rely, that the small profit attached to the bakers' trade, and the bad quality of the flour, induces the generality of the London bakers to use alum in the making of their bread.
The smallest quantity of alum that can be employed with effect to produce a white, light, and porous bread, from an inferior kind of flour, I have my own baker's authority to state, is from three to four ounces to a sack of flour, weighing 240 pounds. The alum is either mixed well in the form of powder, with a quantity of flour previously made into a liquid paste with water, and then incorporated with the dough; or the alum is dissolved in the water employed for mixing up the whole quantity of the flour for making the dough.
Let us suppose that the baker intends to convert five bushels, or a sack of flour, into loaves with the least adulteration practised. He pours the flour into the kneading trough, and sifts it through a fine wire sieve, which makes it lie very light, and serves to separate any impurities with which the flour may be mixed. Two ounces of alum are then dissolved in about a quart of boiling water, and the solution poured into the seasoning-tub. Four or five pounds of salt are likewise put into the tub, and a pailful of hot-water. When this mixture has cooled down to the temperature of about 84°, three or four pints of yeast are added; the whole is mixed, strained through the seasoning sieve, emptied into a hole in the flour, and mixed up with the requisite portion of it to the consistence of a thick batter. Some dry flour is then sprinkled over the top, and it is covered up with cloths.
In this situation it is left about three hours. It gradually swells and breaks through the dry flour scattered on its surface. An additional quantity of warm water, in which one ounce of alum is dissolved, is now added, and the dough is made up into a paste as before; the whole is then covered up. In this situation it is left for a few hours.
The whole is then intimately kneaded with more water for upwards of an hour. The dough is cut into pieces with a knife, and penned to one side of the trough; some dry flour is sprinkled over it, and it is left in this state for about four hours. It is then kneaded again for half-an-hour. The dough is now cut into pieces and weighed, in order to furnish the requisite quantity for each loaf. The loaves are left in the oven about two hours and a half. When taken out, they are carefully covered up, to prevent as much as possible the loss of weight.[43]
The following account of making a sack, of five bushels of flour into bread, is taken from Dr. P. Markham's Considerations on the Ingredients used in the Adulteration of Bread Flour, and Bread, p. 21:
| 5 bushels of flour, | ||
| 8 ounces of alum,[44] | ||
| 4 lbs. of salt, | ||
| 1/2 a gallon of yeast, mixed with about | ||
| 3 gallons of water. | ||
| lbs. | ||
| The whole quantity of bread-flour obtained from the bushel of wheat, weighs | 48 | |
| lbs. | ||
| Fine pollard | 4-1/4 | |
| Coarse pollard | 4 | |
| Bran | 2-3/4 | |
| ——— | 11 | |
| — | ||
| The whole together | 59 | |
| To which add the loss of weight in manufacturing a bushel of wheat | 2 | |
| — | ||
| Produces the original weight | 61 | |
| — | ||
The theory of the bleaching property of alum, as manifested in the panification of an inferior kind of flour, is by no means well understood; and indeed it is really surprising that the effect should be produced by so small a quantity of that substance, two or three ounces of alum being sufficient for a sack of flour.