I repeat, then, that they who would have the very best bread should certainly wash their wheat, and cleanse it thoroughly from all impurities, before they take it to the mill; and when it is properly dried, it should be ground by sharp stones which will cut rather than mash it: and particular care should be taken that it is not ground too fine. Coarsely ground wheat meal, even when the bran is retained, makes decidedly sweeter and more wholesome bread than very finely ground meal. When the meal is ground, it should immediately be spread out to cool before it is put into sacks or casks:—for if it is packed or enclosed in a heated state, it will be far more likely to become sour and musty. And I say again, where families are in circumstances to do wholly as they choose in the matter, it is best to have but little ground at a time; as the freshly ground meal is always the liveliest and sweetest, and makes the most delicious bread.
When the meal is thus prepared and brought home, whether in a barrel or sack, the next thing to be attended to, is, that it be placed and kept in a perfectly clean, and sweet, and well ventilated meal room. It should on no consideration be put into a closet, or pantry, or store-room, which is seldom aired, and more rarely cleansed; and into which all manner of rubbish is thrown; or even where other kinds of provisions are kept. If the meal be put into a pantry or store-room which is confined and dirty, and into which old boots and shoes, and old clothes and pieces of carpet, and other things of this kind, are thrown—or where portions of vegetable or animal substance, whether cooked or uncooked, are habitually or even occasionally put and permitted to remain, it must be expected, as a matter of course, of necessity, that the quality of the meal will be considerably deteriorated by the impurities with which the air of the place will be loaded, and which will be continually generated there.
People generally have but a sorry idea of what constitutes true cleanliness; but they may be assured that they cannot be too deeply impressed with the importance of keeping their meal room as clean and sweet and well aired as possible.
FERMENTATION.
Chemical composition of flour. Yeast—modes of preparing it. Substitutes for it. Fermentation, and its products. Vinous, acetous and putrefactive fermentation.
Having procured good wheat, cleansed it thoroughly, and got it properly ground, and placed in the meal room, the next step is to take a portion of the meal and manufacture it into good bread. But in order that this may be done in the most certain and perfect manner, it is important that the properties of the meal and the principles concerned in bread-making should be well understood.
According to the statement of Prof. Thomson, of Edinburgh, one pound of good wheat meal contains ten ounces of farina or starch, three ounces of bran, six drams of gluten and two drams of sugar;—and it is because wheat contains such proportions of these substances that it makes the very best loaf bread. The farina or starch is the principal nourishing property;—the saccharine matter or sugar is also highly nutrient; but in the process of making loaf bread, it serves mainly, by its vinous fermentation, to produce the gas or air by which the dough is raised and the bread made light. The gluten is likewise a very nutrient property, but in loaf bread, it principally serves, by its cohesiveness, like gum elastic, or India rubber, to prevent the gas or air formed by the fermentation of the sugar, from escaping or passing off;—and the gas being thus retained, inflates or puffs up the dough, and makes it porous and light. The bran, with its mucilaginous and other properties, not only adds to the nutritiousness of the bread, but eminently serves to increase its digestibility, and to invigorate the digestive organs, and preserve the general integrity of their functions.
The wheat which is raised in Virginia and the southern states generally, contains a larger proportion of gluten than that which is raised in the western part of the state of New York. Hence bakers are able to make a larger loaf of bread out of a pound of southern flour than they can out of a pound of western flour; and consequently some of them have endeavored to make their customers believe that the southern flour is the most profitable. It certainly is the most profitable for the baker; but it is not the most profitable for the consumer.
The next thing indispensably necessary to the making of good bread, is good lively sweet yeast, or leaven, to produce what is called the panary, or more properly, the vinous fermentation of the saccharine matter, or sugar.
Some bread-makers will do best with one kind of yeast or leaven, and some with another. I have generally found that people do best with those materials to which they have been most accustomed; but I am sorry to find so general a dependence on breweries for yeast. To say nothing of the impure and poisonous substances which brewers employ in the manufacture of beer, and which always affect the quality of their yeast, I am confident that domestic yeast can be made of a far superior quality. However light and good in other respects that bread may be which is made with brewers yeast, I have rarely if ever seen any in which I could not at once detect the disagreeable properties of the yeast.