“The bread recommended, made of all the flour of the wheat, retains all the good properties of bread; it is eatable at the distance of eight or ten days: is it not on this account the most eligible?”
“Take a loaf of the wheaten London bread, made by the baker in his usual way; let the same baker make another with all the flour of the wheat, without any attempt to whiten or otherwise adulterate it. Let him keep both in the same temperature of air, and produce a specimen of each at any reasonable distance of time, and it will be easily seen what the difference is. This arises not only from mixtures, but the peculiar manner of raising the sponge.”
“In regard to the difference of consuming new bread of the first day, and that which has been made for three, four, or five days, it is computed to be at least a fourth part. If our present wheaten bread cannot be eaten with pleasure beyond the second day, it is not wonderful to discover at last that we are lighting our candle at both ends.”
“That the vitiated bread agrees with some people, whether by the force of habit, or the mixtures it contains, is not disputed; but in general it is very hurtful.”
“Great numbers of our fellow-subjects eat their bread much coarser than the Londoners: are they weaker? they are generally stronger. Some part of the advantage must be carried to this account.”
“Let us have time to subdue our prejudices, and we shall find that bread of all the flour of the wheat, for the general use, is better both in quality and price than the present wheaten bread.”
“In regard to the London baker, ask him of what parts of the wheat his bread is made, and he frankly acknowledges he cannot tell; and how should he? He can buy only what is to be sold; and the quality is not ascertained with any such precision as to enable him to answer the question. He, poor man does the best he can, not to give a sweet wholesome aliment, but something which is white. He knows that bread made of a proper proportion of the wheat, not only differs in colour, but is moister at the end of eight days than his the third day; he likewise knows that it is sweeter, and has the native grateful flavour of the wheat, as the God of Nature hath given it, and not as it hath been adulterated.”
“If the parliament had required us to eat plum-cake, seed-cake, or sugar-cake, we should have known that plums, seed, and sugar, constituted the difference; but from the moment the law made distinctions in the division of the flour for three different kinds of bread for common use, we were exposed to the mercy of the miller to give the baker what he pleased, and call it by what name he pleased; we could only judge whether the bread pleased us or not. The miller and the baker divide and subdivide; and instead of flour for bread, and the bran that remained, according to ancient practice, whereby the beggar as well as the prince was pleased, bread became a mystery, and we no longer knew what we were eating.”
“Our misfortune, in regard to bread, is, that we eat it too fine; we decline the use of barley in bread, having hardly enough for beer. Oats and pease are rejected: at length we reject even wheaten flour,—unless we are supplied with the finest parts only!—What will befall us in the end?”
“Custom often makes a law more forcible than Law-givers, and we have now to contend with custom.—The first consideration should be, that the flour which represents three-fourths of the wheat, shall be really such, and brought to market in sacks, marked Standard: the value of it may be more easily ascertained, than that of which is made the wheaten bread we now eat.”