QUALITIES OP FLOUR. 267 



soft and agreeable. But in the course of a day or two 

 the peculiar softness disappears, and the bread seems to 

 be drier and crumbles readily. This apparent dryness is 

 not caused by a loss of water. Stale bread contains very 

 nearly the same amount of water as that newly baked. 

 Both contain on an average from thirty-five to forty-five 

 pounds of water in every hundred pounds. Stale bread, 

 though not generally so agreeable to the taste, is very 

 properly regarded as more wholesome than new. 



970. The more gluten any variety of flour contains, 

 the more water will it hold. When wet, the gluten does 

 not dry up readily, but forms a close and tenacious coating 

 around the little cells formed in rising, which neither 

 allows the gas enclosed in them to escape nor the water 

 to dry up and pass off in vapor, but both are retained. 



971. Now we see why flour made of wheat grown in a 

 warmer climate and containing a larger per cent, of 

 gluten, is sold at a higher price in the market. It is 

 intrinsically more valuable. The larger amount of gluten 

 not only increases its nutritive value, but its economic 

 value also. It has a greater power of holding the car 

 bonic acid gas produced in the fermentation, and this 

 gives it the spongy lightness always characteristic of good 

 bread. It also absorbs more water, and its weight is 

 greater. 



972. In an experiment said to have been carefully and 

 accurately made, with two pounds of Cincinnati and two 

 pounds of Alabama flour, each being mixed with a quarter 

 of a pound of yeast, made into a loaf, and both baked in 

 the same oven, the loaf made from the first was found to 

 weigh three pounds, that from the second three and a half. 

 The difference was thus about fifteen per cent, in favor 

 of the southern or more glutinous flour. If the same 



