CHAPTER XXI 



FERMENTATION 



213. While baking powder is universally used for biscuits 

 and cake, it is seldom, if ever, used for bread, because it 

 does not furnish sufficient gas to lighten the tough heavy 

 mass of bread dough. Then, too, most people prefer the 

 taste of yeast-raised bread. There is a reason for this wide- 

 spread preference, but to understand it, we must go some- 

 what far afield, and must study not only the bread of to-day, 

 but the bread of antiquity, and the wines as well. 



If grapes are crushed, they yield a liquid which tastes 

 like the grapes ; but if the liquid is allowed to stand in a warm 

 place, it loses its original character, and begins to ferment, 

 becoming, in the course of a few weeks, a strongly intoxicat- 

 ing drink. This is true not only of grape juice but also of 

 the juice of all other sweet fruits; apple juice ferments to 

 cider, currant juice to currant wine, etc. This phenomenon 

 of fermentation is known to practically all races of men, and 

 there is scarcely a savage tribe without some kind of fer- 

 mented drink ; in the tropics the fermented juice of the palm 

 tree serves for wine ; in the desert regions, the fermented 

 juice of the century plant ; and in still other regions, the root 

 of the ginger plant is pressed into service. 



The fermentation which occurs in bread making is similar 

 to that which is responsible for the transformation of plant 

 juices into intoxicating drinks. The former process is not so 



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