46 STARCH BREAD. 



made to correspond. An admixture of a fourth is not unsatisfactory. 

 Equal parts render the bread close, hard and of difficult digestion. 

 Fresh potato starch has been added to flour with much success in 

 France, and danger of famine has been thereby prevented. Millers 

 have added 20 per cent, and the process of admixture has been so im- 

 proved by the addition of sugar or barm that 50 per cent, has been 

 added. By the liquefaction of starch and the addition of malted bar- 

 ley still higher proportions have been made. A bread of fine appear- 

 ance composed entirely of starch has been still later made, but the en- 

 tire absence of gluten, and of course of nitrogen, so essential to the 

 animal body, must preclude its use. By other experiments a principle 

 called caseurri has been found to be an immediate constituent of gluten, 

 which being rendered soluble by the addition of bicarbonate of soda, 

 has been added to starch in the proportion of 20 to 100 of the starch, 

 and being dried two days in the sun and ground, makes good bread 

 with yeast, etc. If potato starch and wheat flour be mixed and ground 

 together, a very large proportion of starch may be used, even to 50 or 

 75 per cent. This may also be used in like proportions mixed with 

 wheat and rye. 



There are so many processes for making good bread, cakes, pud- 

 dings, and other preparations of flour, that it will not be important to 

 our purpose to describe any one of them. Bread made of unbolted 

 flour, or more familiarly, bran bread, is now much used ; it is recom- 

 mended to dispeptics and to obviate costiveness, etc. ; with those in 

 health, having much exercise and sensible digestive organs, it is irrita- 

 tive and wanting in requisite nourishment. Fine bolted flour is also 

 very apt to form a concrete mass in the stomach, and in this state is 

 less readily and effectually digested than coarser flour. Very much 

 of the flavor .and goodness of bread, under all circumstances, depends 

 on the manner in which it is made. Machinery has been introduced 

 to knead dough more effectually ; and the addition to the flour of the 

 salts before mentioned prevents the souring of the leaven and dough in 

 summer. 



Warm bread is at all times unwholesome, but especially in warm 

 weather, to those who do not exercise much in open air and to the 

 dispeptic, occasioning a train of unpleasant consequences. The bad 

 effects of this are increased by the addition of melted butter. Fresh 

 bakers bread, particularly when warm, is indeed one of the principal 

 evils of city diet, and one giving rise to numerous diseases ; yet some 

 persist in its use, despite the suggestions of their own good sense. The 

 flavor which is the reputed advantage of fresh over stale bread, is not, 

 in our opinion, equal to that of thoroughly dry bread. Bread, there- 

 fore, as a safe and general rule should not be eaten in any way until 

 it is a day old. 



Rice. There are a variety of forms and admixtures in which flour 



