WAR BREAD AND ITS CONSTITUENTS 31 



comparatively small importance in a time of shortage, 

 related as it is to degrees of superficial excellence in 

 bread rather than to its real nutritive value, is one to 

 which in normal times much attention is given. 



A complaint which has been often heard is that war 

 bread is far from being a uniform product. It may be 

 satisfactory in one locality but much less so in another, 

 and it may vary from time to time in the same locality. 

 Doubtless much of this variation has been due to a 

 difference of skill among bakers, who, when the neces- 

 sity for a new policy first arose, were forced to deal 

 with unaccustomed material. It has been partly due, 

 perhaps, to varying admixtures of the wheat with 

 other cereals, but it has been also due to variation in 

 the nature of the wheat itself. In normal times it is 

 possible for the milling and baking trades combined 

 to adopt such a policy as will secure more or less 

 uniformity in the bread-supply. Wheats of different 

 quality can be so combined in the flours on the 

 market as to keep up an average standard. Diffi- 

 culties of supply and of transport have since the war 

 interfered with such arrangements, and there has been 

 much less uniformity in the local and general supply. 

 Now the effect of variation in the wheat upon the 

 quality of the loaf depends upon some very interesting 

 facts. 



Wheats are said to be strong or weak. By a strong 

 wheat is meant one capable of yielding from a given 

 weight of its flour a relatively large well-risen loaf of 

 uniformly porous texture. The same weight of flour 

 from a specially weak wheat will make a small flat 

 loaf. It was earlier stated that the production of a 

 leavened loaf is only made possible at all because of 

 the presence of gluten in wheat flour. Its properties, 

 we have seen, confer upon the dough the power of re- 

 taining gas, and so ensure the rising of the loaf during 



