BREAD BREAD FRUIT. 



069 



The process pursued is the following : Some old 

 dough, called leaven, which, by a peculiar spirituous 

 fermentation, lias swelled up, becomes spongy, and 



acquires an acid and spirituous smell, is kneaded 

 with the new dough, and produces, though in an 

 inferior degree, a similar fermentation in the whole 

 mass. The whole thus becomes spongy ; a quantity 

 of air or gas is developed, which, being prevented 

 from escaping by the tenacity of the dough, heaves 

 and swells it, and gives it a porous consistency. This 

 is called the working of the dough. In this state, 

 the dough is put into the heated oven, where the air 

 contained in it, and the spirituous substance, are still 

 more expanded by heat, and increase the porosity of 

 the bread, making it materially different from the 

 unbaked dough. The best and most wholesome 

 bread is baked in some parts of France, and on the 

 Rhine. In England, the flour is adulterated with too 

 many foreign substances, in order to make the bread 

 whiter. In some parts of Sweden, the bread is com- 

 posed, in part, of the bark of trees, during the winter. 

 In Westphalia, a kind of very coarse, black bread is 

 made, of which the peasants bake one large loaf for 

 the whole week. This is divided for use with small 

 saws. It is called pumpernickel, and is sometimes 

 exported. In many parts of Germany, bread is made 

 of grain nearly entire, or but just bruised, which is 

 very coarse, and frequently forms part of the food of 

 the horses. Bread is found wherever civilization has 

 extended. It is made of wheat, lye, maize, barley, 

 oats, spelt, &c. The want of bread has often occa- 

 sioned public commotions, particularly in Paris and 

 ancient Rome. 



The species of bread in common use in a country 

 depends partly on the taste of the inhabitants, but 

 more on the sort of grain suitable for its soil. But 



the superiority of wheat to all other farinaceous 

 plants in the manufacture of bread is so very great, 

 that wherever it is easily and successfully cultivated, 

 wheaten bread is used to- the nearly total exclusion of 

 most others. Where, however, the soil or climate is 

 less favourable to its growth, rye, oats, &c. are used 

 in its stead. A very great change for the better has, 

 in this respect, taken place in Great Britain within 

 the last century. It is mentioned by Harrison, in his 

 description of England, that in the reign of Henry 

 VIII. the gentry had wheat sufficient for their own 

 tables, but that their household and poor neighbours 

 were usually obliged to content themselves with rye, 

 barley, and oats. It appears from the household 

 lxok of Sir Edward Coke, that, in 1596, rye bread 

 und oatmeal formed a considerable part of the diet of 

 servants even in great families, in the southern coun- 

 ties. Barley bread is stated in the grant of a mono- 

 poly by Charles I., in 1626, to be the usual food of 

 the ordinary sort of people. At the revolution, the 

 wheat produced in England and Wales was estimated 

 by Mr King and Dr Davenant to amount to 1,750,000 

 quarters. Mr Charles Smith, author of Tracts on the 

 Corn Trade, originally published in 1758, states, that 

 in his time wheat had become much more generally 

 the food of the common people than it had been in 

 1689 ; but he adds (2d ed, p. 182. London, 1766.), 

 that notwithstanding this increase, some very intelli- 

 gent inquirers were of opinion, that even then not 

 more than half the people of England fed on wheat. 

 Mr Smith's own estimate, which is very carefully 

 drawn up, is a little higher ; for taking the population 

 of England and Wales, in 1760, at 6,000,000 he 

 supposed that 



3,750,000 were consumers of wheat. 

 739,000 .... barley. 

 888,000 . . . rye. 



623,000 .... oats. 



Mr Smith further supposed that they individually 



consumed, the first class, one quarter of wheat ; the 

 second, one quarter and three bushels of barley ; the 

 third, one quarter and one bushel of rye ; and the 

 fourth, two quarters and seven bushels of oats. 



About the middle of last century, hardly any wheat 

 was used hi the northern counties of England. In 

 Cumberland, the principal families used only a small 

 quantity about Christmas. The crust of the goose- 

 pie, with which almost every table in the county is 

 then supplied, was, at the period referred to, almost 

 uniformly made of barley meal. Every one knows 

 how inapplicable these statements are to the condi- 

 tion of the people of England at the present time. 

 Loaf-bread is now universally made use of in towns 

 and villages, and almost universally in the country. 

 Barley is no longer used, except in the distilleries 

 and in brewing ; the use of oats as a bread is confined 

 to Scotland and Ireland ; and the consumption of rye 

 bread is comparatively inconsiderable. The produce 

 of the wheat crops has been, at the very least, treblea 

 since 1760. And if to this immense increase in the 

 supply of wheat, we add the still more extraordinary 

 increase in the supply of butchers' meat, the fact of a 

 very signal improvement having taken place in the 

 condition of the population, in respect of food, will 

 be obvious. But great as has been the improvement 

 in the condition of the people of England since 1760, 

 it is but trifling compared to the improvement that 

 has taken place, since the same period, in the condi- 

 tion of the people of Scotland. At the middle ot last 

 century, Scottish agriculture was in the most depressed 

 state ; the tenants were destitute alike of capital and 

 skill ; green crops were almost wholly unknown ; 

 and the quantity of wheat that was raised was quite 

 inconsiderable. A field of eight acres sown with this 

 grain, in the vicinity of Edinburgh, in 1727, was 

 reckoned so great a curiosity that it. excited the at- 

 tention of the whole neighbourhood. But even so 

 late as the American war, the wheat raised in the. 

 Lothians and Berwickshire did not exceed a third 

 part of what is now grown in them ; and taking the 

 whole country at an average, it will be a moderate 

 estimate to say, that the cultivation of wheat has 

 increased in a tenfold proportion since 1780. At that 

 period no loaf-bread was to be met with in the coun- 

 try places and villages of Scotland; oat cakes and 

 barley bannocks being universally made use of. But 

 at present the case is widely different. The upper, 

 and also the middle and lower classes, in towns and 

 villages, use only wheaten bread, and even in farm- 

 houses it is very extensively consumed. There is, at 

 this moment, hardly a village to be met with, how- 

 ever limited its extent, that has not a public baker 

 In many pails of England it is the custom for private 

 families to bake their own bread. This is particu- 

 larly the case in Kent, and in some parts of Lanca- 

 shire. In 1804, there was not a single public baker 

 in Manchester; and their number is still very li- 

 mited. 



BREAD-FRUIT. The bread fruit is a large, globular 

 berry, of a pale-green colour, about the size of a 

 child's head, marked on the surface with irregular 

 six-sided depressions, and containing a white and 

 somewhat fibrous pulp, which, when ripe, becomes 

 juicy and yellow. The tree that produces it (arto- 

 carpits incisa) grows wild in Otaheite and other islands 

 of the South seas, is about forty feet high, with large 

 and spreading branches, and has large, bright-green 

 leaves, deeply divided into seven or nine spear- 

 shaped lobes. 



We are informed, in captain Cook's first voyage 

 round the world, that the eatable part of this fruit 

 lies between the skin and the core ; and that it is as 

 white as snow, and somewhat of the consistence of 

 new bread. When gathered, it is generally tiswl 



