1826.] on the Art of Baking Bread. ^69 



of the present laborious process of kneading, tliait ho loaf-bread 

 can be well made by any of the extemporaneous systems above 

 considered, because they are all inconsistent with the thorough 

 kneading of the dough. It is this process which is found to 

 render dough at once elastic enough to expand when carbonic 

 acid gas is generated within it, and cohesive enough to confine 

 this gas after it is generated. In reality, according to the 

 present system, almost the whole gas which is used in the mak- 

 ing of each loaf is actually generated within it, by a continuation 

 of the regular panary fermentation, after all the processes of 

 kneading have been finished. For the loaf, after having been 

 weighed-out, kneaded, and shaped, is set aside until it expands 

 gradually to a double bulk, preparatory to its entering the oven. 

 But of course when dough has been artificially impregnated with 

 carbonic acid gas under any of the methods lately considered, 

 as the gas has not the slightest affinity for any one constituent of 

 the dough, it is impossible to subject that substance to a thorough 

 kneading, without literally squeezing and expelling out of it al- 

 most every particle of the air; and when this has once been 

 fully accomplished, as it infallibly will be in the common process 

 of thorough kneading, the internal supply of elastic fluid can- 

 not be afterwards renewed, because the temporary cause which 

 produced it is no longer in existence. Thus the baker who 

 should attempt to use it, seems reduced to the hard alternative, 

 of either abandoning the kneading process altogether, in which 

 case he will never obtain a single piled or even well-raised vesi- 

 cular loaf, or adhering to the kneading, in which case he will lose 

 even the little benefit which the carbonic acid gas would otherwise 

 have conferred, and obtain a bread, doughy, compact, and sad. 



But although the water of acidulous mineral springs is inca- 

 pable of being used by the baker with success in forming good 

 ordinary bread, there is another manner in which he often 

 employs the simple element as a means of procuring for him the 

 desideratum of gasified bread with considerable effect ; for its 

 vapour, expanded in the oven, is often a useful agent in raising 

 many kinds of bread. When the vapour of water is thus to be 

 employed as the expanding agent, it is customary to give an 

 adventitious degree of adhesion to the particles of the dough, 

 by making it of thinner consistency than usual, and by mixing 

 up with it some glutinous or gelatinous substance, as eggs, an 

 aqueous solution of isinglass or gum, or any gelatinized amyla- 

 ceous substance. It is by no means unfrequent, however, to 

 add also a small proportion of carbonate of ammonia, in order 

 to assist the vapour of water in acting as the expansive principle 

 in the oven. 



There is nothing very peculiar or remarkable in the general 

 application of these means of expansion. But there is one 

 instance of its use in forming a product, with which every one Is 



