1 826.] on the Art of Baking Bread. Ill 



often felt by every baker to be unknown in the experience of 

 almost any bread-consumer in the country. Against this 

 mischief, it scarcely seems that the utmost skill or precaution 

 that can, in the present state of the art, be employed, is suflfi- 

 cient to guard. For if the flour has been originally of bad 

 quality, or if the yeast employed be of a weak or indifferent 

 sort, or if the water be added at too high or too low a tempera- 

 ture, or perhaps, also, if the state of the atmosphere be not 

 favourable, the dough may speedily be found to become 

 acescent. In short whenever the second process of decomposi- 

 tion commences within dough, before the vinous fermentation of 

 the saccharine ingredient has proceeded far enough to evolve 

 the required quantity of carbonic acid gas, then the bread can 

 not, by any means at present used, be made to possess the quali- 

 ties of lightness and sweetness joined. The one of these can be 

 obtained only at the expense of sacrificing the other ; for the 

 baker must either, as soon as the incipient acescence appears, 

 send his dough to the oven, and obtain in return a sad and ill- 

 raised loaf, or if he prefers, as is generally done, to have it light 

 and well-raised, and therefore allows due scope to the fermenta- 

 tive process, the bread will certainly be sour. 



There is, however, a very simple and a very complete cure 

 for this evil, a method by means of which, even after acescence 

 shall have decidedly commenced, the baker may nevertheless be 

 enabled to remove it entirely without sacrificing the valuable 

 object of the vesicularity of his loaf. The remedy to be applied 

 in order completely to neutralize an acid, as will at once suggest 

 itself to every chemist, is the due exhibition of an alkali. And 

 it is a striking proof how much the mechanic has been accus- 

 tomed to plod,uninquiringanduninstructed, over the same ground, 

 in past times when he was less famihar with science than he is 

 likely now to become and for ever to continue, that a relief so 

 obvious and so simple, from inconveniences so excessive, should 

 at this moment remain unknown to the greater part, if not to 

 all, of the bread-manufactories in the country. The use of a 

 little of the carbonate of soda, or of the carbonate of magnesia, 

 is all that is required in order to secure to the baker a dough 

 which he may always have sweet and pleasant during the entire 

 progress of fermentation ; and even in case he may have 

 allowed acidity to supervene to no inconsiderable extent, the 

 same alkalies may be successfully and innocently employed in 

 restoring dough to its original freshness. 



In order to bring the matter fairly to the test, and to try the 

 effects of the system here spoken of, a quantity of ordinary loaf- 

 dough was taken, when just fit for the oven, and set aside in a 

 warm situation, where, of course, the fermentation briskly 

 proceeded. To the simple saccharine decomposition was soon 

 added the secondary process of acescent fermentation, and the 



New Series, vol. xii. n 



