308 Bread, [July, 



be raised in the good old-fashioned way with yeast, for it makes a more 

 wholesome and nutritious article. 



There are differences in the quality of flour, which no analysis can 

 detect. There may be the proper proportion of gluten and the other 

 ingredients, but these differ among themselves in quality, in the " put- 

 ting together " of their various elements ; and it requires some experience 

 to form a correct judgment of this matter. T. EoyaL in a letter to the 

 Scientific American, gives the following useful directions in regard to 

 this and some other matters connected with bread-making. He sajs: 



" Wheat sown in the fall, will produce grain much heavier than the 

 same seed sown in the spring ; and one hundred pounds of winter-wheat 

 flour, will make more and better bre;td, than one hundred pounds of 

 flour made from spring wheat. 



" Millers find it economical to use large stones in grinding, but large 

 stones injure the quality of the flour. No mill-stone should be over 

 three feet in diameter. Flour from such a stone will make more and 

 better bread, than flour made from a five-foot stone ; so that one hundred 

 pounds of winter wheat ground with three-foot stones, and baked by a reg- 

 ular baker, with the drugs and chemicals at present used, will make one 

 hundred and seventy pounds of good bread. One hundred pounds of the 

 same description of flour, baked as women bake for their families, will 

 make one hundred and forty pounds of good bread. One hundred pounds 

 of bad flour baked as women bake for their families, will make one hun- 

 dred pounds of pretty good bread. By bad flour, 1 do not mean flour 

 which has received any damage from heat or damp, or from any other 

 cause ; but I mean sound spring wheat, nicely and finely ground with 

 large stones, five feet or more in diameter — flour that almost any one, 

 except master-bakers, would pronounce to be ' superfine, A. No. 1.' 



" One pound of dough, baked in an oven in pans, will make one 

 pound of bread — nice, large, sweet bread — and almost entirely devoid 

 of nutritious qualities ; useful, principally, as a kind of vehicle to 

 transport butter into the human stomach. One pound of dough baked 

 on the bricks on the bottom of the oven, will lose two or three ounces 

 in weight in baking, and will not look so nice, but it will be sixty per 

 cent, more nutritious than the same amount of dough baked in the pan. 



** This statement, in relation to baking in pans and on the bottom of 

 the oven, may seem incredible to most people ; and I would advise all 

 persons not to believe what I have stated, until they choose to try the 

 experiment themselves. 



" In the army, we had issued to us every morning, sixteen ounces of 

 bread. Those who got their ration in pan bread, would eat it all for 



