JOURNAL 



OF THE 



ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 

 OF ENGLAND. 



THE COMPOSITION AND FOOD VALUE 

 OF BREAD. 



By T. B. Wood, M.A., 



Fellow of GoninUe and Gains College. 



DrajJers Professor of Agriculture in the University of 



Camhridge. 



Wheat has been a staple article of diet amongst a large 



proportion of the inhabitants of the world from the earliest 



times of which information as to the dietary of human l)eings 



is available. Primitive man apparently ate his wheat and 



other cereal grains whole, sometimes even entirely uncooked, 



but more frequently dried or parched by fire. As civilisation 



dawned and the practice of preparing and cooking food came 



into use, primitive mills, somewhat resembling the mortar and 



I pestle of the present-day chemist, were devised. Such mills 



— are still in use in the East. They served to reduce the grains 



'^ to a more or less coarse powder which could be readily mixed 



•* into a paste or dough with water. This dough was shaped 



(^ into cakes and cooked by baking, no doubt originally into un- 



y leavened bread, but in later times, with the addition of yeast, 



^ into 1)read as we understand it to-day. 



>5^ Such primitive mills produced a wheat meal containing the 



whole of the grain. They were incapable of attempting any 

 — ' separation of flour and Ijran, which for the present may be 

 ~ accepted as the two chief com})onents of the wheat grain. As 

 ^ the more civilised peoples acquired more refined habits of 

 ^ feeding, and the mechanical arts advanced, the primitive 

 O mortar and pestle mill, by a process of continuous evolution, 

 O reached its climax in the mechanically driven millstones 

 Y^) which ground the whole of the breadstufi's of the civiliseti 



world until about forty years ago. 

 (_—. The stone mill of that date was an instrument of the 

 "^greatest delicacy and precision, but it had nevertheless its 

 ^3imitations. As long as the wheat with which it had to deal 

 <=3- VOL. 72. B 



5 



> VOI^K 



Garden 



