Raising bread by inducing fermentation, wastes a part of the saccharine matter; and the more it is raised, the greater is the waste. By lessening the attraction of cohesion, it makes it more easy of digestion, it is true; but the loss of nutriment and of pleasure to the true appetite more than counterbalances this. Bakers, in striving to get a large loaf, rob the bread of most of its sweetness.
Salt is objectionable, because it hardens the bread, and renders it more difficult of digestion. Our ancestors, in this country, did not use it at all; and many are the families that will not use it now.
Those who use salt in bread, tell us how flat it would taste without it. This idea of flatness has two sources. 1. We have so long given our bread the taste of salt, as we have most other things, that it seems tasteless without it. 2. The flatness spoken of in an article of food is oftentimes the true taste of the article, unaltered by any stimulus. If any two articles need to be stimulated with salt, however, it is rice and beans—bread never.
If saleratus is used in bread where no acidity is present, it is a medicine; or, if you please, a poison both to the stomach and intestines. If it meets and neutralizes an acid either in the bread-tray or the stomach, the residuum is a new chemical compound diffused through the bread, which is more or less injurious, according to its nature and quantity.
Milk is objectionable on the score of its tendency to render the bread more indigestible than when it was wet with water, and perhaps by rendering it too nutritious. For good bread without the milk is already too nutritious for health, if eaten exclusively, for a long time. That man should not live on bread alone, is as true physically as it is morally.
No bread should be eaten while new and hot—though the finer it is, the worse for health when thus eaten. Old bread, heated again, is less hurtful. But if eaten both new and hot, and with butter or milk, or any thing which soaks and fills it, the effect is very bad. Mrs. Howland, in her Economical Housekeeper, says much about ripe bread. And I should be glad to say as much, had I room, about ripe bread, and about the true philosophy of bread and bread-making, as she has.
Section A.—Bread of the first order.
This is made of coarse meal—as coarse as it can well be ground, provided the kernels are all broken. The grain should be well washed, and it may be ground in the common way, or according to the oriental mode, in hand-mills. The latter mode is preferable, because you can thus have it fresh. Meal is somewhat injured by being kept long ground.
If great pains is not taken to have the grain clean when ground, it needs to be passed through a coarse sieve, that all foreign bodies may be carefully separated. The hulls of corn, and especially the husks of oats and buckwheat, should also be separated in some way. In no case, however, should meal be bolted. Good health requires that we eat the innutritious and coarser parts as well as the finer.
Receipt 1.—Take a sufficient quantity of good, recent wheat meal;[25] wet it well, but not too soft, with pure water; form it into thin cakes, and bake it as hard as the teeth will bear. Remember, however, that the saliva aids the teeth greatly, especially when you masticate your food slowly. The cakes should be very thin—the thinner the better. Many, however, prefer them an inch thick, or even more.