BREAD 477 



a number of freedraen were associated, forming together an incorporation from which 

 neither they nor their children could separate, and of which even those who married 

 the daughters of bakers were obliged to become members. To this incorporation 

 were entrusted all the mills, utensils, slaves, animals, everything, in short, which 

 belonged to the former bakehouses. In addition to these, they received considerable 

 portions of land ; and nothing was withheld which could assist them in pursuing, to 

 the best advantage, their highly prized labours and trade. The practice of con- 

 demning criminals and slaves, for petty offences, to work in the bakehouse, was still 

 continued ; and even the judges of Africa were bound to send thither, every five 

 years, such persons as had incurred that kind of chastisement. The bakehouses were 

 distributed throughout the fourteen divisions of the city, and no baker could pass 

 from one into another without special permission. The public granaries were com- 

 mitted to their care ; they paid nothing for the corn employed in baking bread 

 that was to bo given in largess to the citizens ; and the price of the rest was regu- 

 lated by the magistrates. No corn was given out of these granaries except for the 

 bakehouses, and for the private use of the prince. The bakers had besides private 

 granaries, in which they deposited the grain which they had taken from the piiblic 

 granaries for immediate use ; and if any of them happened to be convicted of having 

 diverted any portion of the grain to another purpose, he was condemned to a ruinous 

 fine of five hundred pounds' weight of gold. 



Most of these regulations were soon introduced among the Gauls ; but it was long 

 before they found their way into the more northern countries of Europe. Borrichius 

 informs us that in Sweden and Norway, the only bread known, so late as the middle 

 of the 16th century, was unleaven cakes kneaded by the women. At what period in 

 our own history the art of baking became a separate profession, we have not been 

 able to ascertain ; but this profession is now common to all the countries in Europe, 

 and the process of baking is also nearly the same. 



The French, who particularly excel in the art of baking, have a great many different 

 kinds- of bread. Their pain bis, or brown bread, is the coarsest kind of all, and is made 

 of coarse groats mixed with a portion of white flour. The pain de meteil is a broad 

 made with rye and barley flour, to which wheat flour is sometimes added also. The 

 pain bis blanc, is a kind of bread between white and brown, made of white flour and 

 fine groats. The pain blanc, or white bread, is made of white flour, shaken through 

 a sieve after the finest flour has been separated. The pain mallet, or soft bread, is 

 made of the purest flour without any admixture. The fain chaland, or customers' 

 bread, is a very white kind of bread, made of pounded paste. Pain chapele, is a 

 small kind of bread, with a well-beaten and very light paste, with butter or milk. 

 This name is also given to a small bread, from which the thickest crust has been 

 removed by a rasp. Pain cornu is a name given by the French bakers to a kind of 

 bread made with four corners, and sometimes more. Of all the kinds of small bread 

 this has the strongest and firmest paste. Pain a la reine, queen's bread, pain a la 

 Segovie, pain chapele, and pain cornu, are all small kinds of bread, differing only in 

 the lightness or thickness of the paste. Pain de gruau is a small very white bread 

 made now in Paris, from the flour separated after a slight grinding from the best 

 wheat. Such flour is in hard granular particles. 



In England, however, we have but fow*varieties of bread, the loaves known under 

 the names of bricks, Coburg, cottage, and French rolls, being all made of the same 

 dough ; the only difference is in the shape given to them, their various flavours 

 depending on the way in which they are affected by the heat of the oven in the 

 baking. These loaves are crusted all over because they are deposited in the oven 

 separate from each other, or baked in moulds made of tinned iron. The batch bread, 

 the more usual variety, is crusted only at the top and bottom, because the loaves, 

 which have a cubic form, touch each other in the oven ; those, however, which lie 

 round the oven have a crust on three of their sides. The cottage and French rolls 

 are generally made of best flour, known under the name of whites ; but batch 

 bread is made of best flour and of households, or flour of second quality, and of 

 seconds, which is flour of a third quality that is, of flour containing more bran than 

 the other kinds just enumerated. 



We have also ' rye bread,' which is generally made of nothing else than ordinary 

 wheat flour and bran. 



Dr. Ure, in the former edition of this Dictionary, truly remarked, ' The object 

 of baking is to combine the gluten and starch of the flour into a homogeneous sub- 

 stance, and to excite such a vinous fermentative action, by means of its saccharine 

 matter, as shall disengage abundance of carbonic acid gas in it for making an agree- 

 able, soft, succulent, spongy, and easily digestible bread. The two evils to be avoided 

 in baking are, hardness on the one hand and pastiness on the other. Well-made 

 bread is a chemical compound, in which the gluten and starch cannot be recognised 



