Bread has long been an important staple of human life. Wars have been fought and revolutions sprung for the want of bread, and while me might take it for granted, the science of bread-making was critical to early settlers, farm wives and Victorian housewives.
Egerton Ryerson - 1870
The Practice and Philosophy of Bread-Making
"Every hundred pounds of wheat contain from fifty-five to sixty-eight ponnds of starch, from ten to twenty pounds of gluten, and from one to five pounds of fatty matter. The relative quautities of these substances vary considerably in different climates and soils. Gluten, as well as starch, exists in most plants, though the proportion in some is far greater than in others. Gluten in plants is nearly identical with fibrin in, or the muscle-forming constituent of meat. Gluten and starch of wheat flour may be wasily separated. The gluten may be washed off of the dough by placing it upon a sieve or a porous cloth tied over a deep dish, aud pouring on water as long as it continues to run through of a milky colour, and until it runs clear. The starch is carried through the sieve or cloth with the water, and the gluten is left on the sieve or cloth. The starch will soon settle to the bottom of the dish.
"On mixing water enough to moisten the whole mass of flour, the particles stick to each other and form a smooth elastic dough, which consists, not only of starch, but of gluten, so called from its sticky or glutinous character. If we add a little yeast to the flour while mixing with water to form dough, and let it stand some hours in a moderately warm place, the dough begins to ferment and rise, increasing considerably in bulk. In rising, little bubbles of carbonic acid gas are set free throughout the mass of dough; and this it is which makes bread porous and light, by the stretching or expansion of the tenaceous gluten. Put the dough in a hot oven, and the fermentation and rising are at first hastened by the increased heat, but when the whole is heated to the point of boiling water, the process of rising is suddenly stopped, and the mass is fixed at this point by the baking.
"The reason why the rising is so suddenly checked in the oven, is that the yeast added to the dough is in reality a living plant, which grows and increases with great activity, when it comes in contact with the moisture of the dough, producing fermentation or rising. During the process a part of the starch in the flour is changed into sugar, and this sugar into alcohol and carbonic acid gas. This gas cannot escape from the dough, since the elastic gluten expands, but it remains in the shape of bubbles. At last the heat becomes great enough to destroy the yeast plant, and the process of rising ceases. The alcohol mostly escapes in baking.
"It is then soft and agreeable. But in the course of a day or two the peculiar softness disappears, and the bread seems to be drier, and crumbles readily. This apparent dryness is not, however, caused by a loss of water. Stale bread contains very nearly the same amount of water as that of newly baked. Both contain, on an average, from thirty-five to forty-five pounds of water in every hundred pounds of bread. Stale bread, though not generally so agreeable to the taste, is considered more wholesome than new.
"Flour in its natural state contains from twelve to sixteen per cent. of water; but it will, in addition, take up about half its own weight of water; so that a hundred pounds of good flour makes about a hundred and fifty pounds of bread.
"It is a fact demonstrated by analysis and experiment, that the bran which is so carefully sifted out of the flour, is rather more nutritious than the fine flour itself. The oily parts of the grain are mostly on the surface; and the grinding of the wheat does not wholly crush the outside covering of the grain, which is harder than the rest. This is usually sifted out from the finer portions in the form of shorts and bran. The less finely bolted flour is undoubted1y more nuritious and wholesome than the finest and whitest samples of the flour itself.
"Rye flour has nearly the same nutritive value as wheat flour, though unlike it in several respects. Its colour is not white, but greyish-brown; the bread from it is not so porous as that made from wheat flour, nor the dough so tough. Its starch cannot be washed out like that of wheat flour. Rye bread may be kept fresh and moist much longer than wheat bread. Barley contains about the same proportions of nutritive matter.
"The general principles of bread-making apply to all kinds of flour or meal; but Indian meal, though in composition and nutritive properties not differing much from wheat flour, does not make equally spongy bread.
