Pre-eminently, then, the desire should be instilled in every baker to equip himself with the knowledge of how to bring his product to such a state of perfection so that it will absolutely measure up to the standard of its title, The Staff of Life.
There are various branches of baking. Bread, cake, pastry and cracker baking. In these talks bread and the materials entering into bread-making only will be discussed.
Raw Materials for the Bread Baker.
In the bread baking the principal materials used are flour, water, yeast, salt, milk, oil, lard, sugar and yeast foods.
I.—Flour and Milling.
A. The moisture of flour. Into a glass retort place some flour, taken at random from the stock on hand. Attach to the neck of the retort a glass flask, seeing to it that the connection is airtight ([Fig. 1]). Heat the flour over a bunson burner gently until brown. Moisture will soon show itself, accumulating at the colder portions of the flask. The neck of the retort should be kept cool with wet cloths. In this manner all the water contained in the flour will be found in the flask.
Ordinary dry flour contains from 8 to 18 per cent of moisture, and averages 13 per cent.
B. Gluten contents of flour.—Knead some wheat flour with water into a dough. Lay it aside under cover for fifteen minutes; then place it in a very fine sieve and let a stream of water flow over it, working the dough all the time, until the draining becomes clear, which should be retained for further testing.
There will remain on the sieve a yellowish gray tough mass.
This is the gluten which imparts strength to the flour. Good sound wheat flour contains 10 to 12 per cent. of gluten.