BREAD 179 



correlated with or depended upon the ratio of gliadin to 

 glutenin therein has in recent years been proved to be fallacious. 

 It was a most ingenious idea which would have minimised 

 most materially the troubles of investigators, but it had to 

 go the way of hasty conclusions based on work too restricted 

 in purview. 



In an article written for a British magazine purporting to 

 deal with modern developments concerning bread or bread- 

 making in Great Britain, nothing more need be said about 

 rye bread, for the quantity consumed in this country is 

 exceedingly small. Practically all British bread is made from 

 wheaten flour. Old men tell us that in their youth, when 

 bread was dear and wages low, some of the best of wheaten 

 offal (the generic technical name for the by-products, consisting 

 principally of husk, made in flour-milling) was used in times 

 of scarcity for the making of common bread, or for mixing 

 with the more costly flour with that object ; but since food 

 has become cheap, and wages in amount and purchasing power 

 so much higher, the working classes, who are the large bread 

 consumers, have become particular, almost fastidious, as to the 

 quality of the bread they buy, so that, judged by its appearance, 

 flavour, digestibility, and food-value, modern bread is much 

 superior to that which was in common use fifty or sixty years 

 ago. There is a type of mind possessed by a large proportion 

 of old people which lingers affectionately on days gone by 

 and believes that many old things, including the bread made 

 fifty years ago, were altogether superior to modern ones, 

 and it is useless, perhaps cruel, to argue with such people, or 

 to suggest that in those days they were healthy youngsters, 

 with corresponding appetites, teeth, digestion, and habits, 

 instead of valetudinarians or people satiated with good things. 

 It is obviously impossible to produce now for actual comparison 

 typical bread made fifty years ago, but enough is known to 

 spoil the pretty picture which such a memory conjures up of 

 the beautiful bread made half a century ago. 



In a recent political controversy one heard of bread eaten 

 with a spoon in those good old days, and though no one 

 suggests that that was typical of all bread, or most bread, 

 made in those days, specimens made from common English 

 wheats damaged in the wet harvests of 1879 or 1902 came as 

 reminders of what we might have to endure if we were now, 



