56 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Jan. 



LADIES' DEPARTMENT. 



STALE BREAD, AND WHAT IT IS. 

 I don't like very stale bread — do you ? My rea- 

 son for disliking it is very much like the reason 

 why I don't like Dr. Fell ; your reason is really 

 the same, but you probably cheat yourself into the 

 belief that it is something else, namely, because 

 the bread is so dry. Allow me to undeceive you. 

 No bread is dry ;' bread just baked is nearly half 

 ■water ; and the stales* of stale loaves has not lost 

 more than a hundredth part of this water. 



The fact that bread contains nearly half its 

 •weight of water is surprising ; but not so surpris- 

 ing as that your body contains a considerably 

 larger portion — nearly three-fourths. It is "wa- 

 ter, Avater everywhere, and (often) not a drop to 

 drink." The flour from which broad is made, is 

 dry enough, containing not more than sixteen per 

 cent, of water ; but it has a great tendency to ab- 

 sorb water, and in the process of baking it, ab- 

 sorbs it rapidly. The gum, which is produced 

 from the starch of the flour in baking, holds this 

 water firmly, and the gluten which forms a coating 

 round every little hollow in the bread, steadily re- 

 sists evaporation. Thus bread becomes moist and 

 keeps moist, let it be never so stale. 



But if stale bread be not dry bread, what is it ? 

 What makes that familiar diftercnce between the 

 soft, plastic, spongy crumb, and the harsh, crumb- 

 ling morsel of six days old ? That it is no diff"er- 

 ence of moisture has been experimentally verified ; 

 every cook or baker could have told us that there 

 is no use in placing bread in a moist cellar to pre- 

 vent the evaporation of its water, since the bread 

 will assin-edly become stale as the hours roll on. 

 On the other hand, every baker and every cook 

 could tell us, that if a stale loaf be placed in the 

 oven again for a few minutes, it will come out 

 having (for a time at least) all the characters of 

 new bread. Yet in the oven it must necessarily 

 have lost some of its water, and comes out dryer 

 than it Avent in — dryer, but not by any means so 

 stale. Further : who does not know the eff'ect of 

 toasting a slice of stale bread ? The fire scorches 

 the outside layers, and renders them completely 

 dry, but, especially, if the slice be not too thin, 

 we find the interior layers deliciously soft, plastic 

 and palatable. 



An experiment made by the eminent French 

 chemist, jM. Eoussingault, proves in a convincing 

 manner, that the amount of water in the broad has 

 nothing to do with its newness. He took a loaf 

 six days old, weighing three kilogrammes, 690 

 grammes, (a kilogramme is something more than 

 two pounds, a gramme is about 15^ grains.) The 

 loaf was placed in the oven for an hour ; on re- 

 moving it, a loss of 120 grammes of water was 

 found to have taken place ; yet, in spite of this 

 loss, amounting to three-fourths per cent., the 

 bread was as new as tlxat just made. 



It is the water in the bread which prevents the 

 loaf becoming all crust. In an oven with a tem- 

 perature of 500 degrees Fahrenheit, the loaf gets 

 roasted outside, and the crust is formed ; but the 

 inside crumb never ha;- a temperature above 100 

 degrees ; the water which is there, and which can- 

 not eva]iorate through the crust, keeping the tem- 

 peratu^-e dov.-n. If this crumb is thus slow to heat, 

 it is also slow to cool. Every one knows how 



long the crumb of a roll continues warm, even on 

 a cold -winter morning ; and the loaf which was 

 taken from the oven at three in the morning, 

 comes warm to the breakfast table at ten. He 

 placed a loaf, hot from the oven, in a room, the 

 temperature of which was 66 degrees. The law of 

 equilibrium, by which a hot body loses heat until 

 it is no hotter than the surrounding objects, in- 

 stantly came into operation ; but, although all 

 bodies give oft' their heat to bodies that are colder, 

 they do so with varying degrees of rapidity — -some 

 being very tenacious of the heat they have got 

 hold of, and others being the most jirodigal of 

 spendthrifts ; and thus the loaf, although it began 

 to cool as soon as taken from the oven, did not 

 reach the temperature of the surrounding air till 

 twenty-four hours had elapsed — and then it was 

 stale. 



Does it not seem, then, that the difi'erence be- 

 tween new bread and stale bread is only the dif- 

 ference between hot bread and cold bread ? It does 

 seem so, when we reflect that we have only to Avarm 

 the stale bread in an oven to make it ' new again. 

 But there is this fact Avhich stands in the way of 

 such an ex])lanation ; the bread which has been 

 r«-bakod, although undistinguishable from bread 

 which has been recently baked, is only so for a 

 short time — it rapidly becomes stale again. Were 

 this not the case, Ave need never have to complain 

 of stale bread ; it could always be made noAV again 

 in a foAV minutes. The conclusion draAvn- by M. 

 Boussingault from his experiments is that the 

 stalcness depends on a peculiar molecular condi- 

 tion of the bread ; and this condition is itself de- 

 pendent on a fall of temperature. 



But new bread, if more palatable, is very un- 

 Avholesome, because very indigestible to those 

 Avhose pc])tics are imperfect. The peculiarity of 

 new bread, that it forms itself into a paste, is an 

 obstacle to its digestion. But this is only true of 

 the lumpish, pasty, doughy, obstinate, irrational 

 bread baked in our favored island. No dyspeptic 

 trembles at the noAV bread of Paris or Vienna. In 

 Vienna they bake — or used to bake Avhen I lived 

 there — three times a day, and perfectly fresh rolls 

 Avcre served up Avith each meal. No one com- 

 plained ; every one ate those rolls so alarming to 

 the dyspeptic mind, and Avould have stormed at 

 an unhappy Avaiter Avho should by accident, or 

 philanthrophy, have brought yesterday's roll. But 

 lot the Aveak and strong boAvare hoAV they trifle Avith 

 the noAV half quartern, Avhich, in unshapely, unin- 

 viting, and Avoll founded modesty, stands on the 

 breakfast table of the British mother. The hot 

 bread may tempt her inconsiderate boy — perhaps 

 the more so because he is assured it is "bad for 

 him." Boys have a very natural suspicion, founded 

 on am])lo experience, that Avhat parents and guar- 

 dians declare to be "good for them," is certain to 

 be odious. They are birched for their good, they 

 are bloussed for their good, they are hurriecl 

 off' to bed for their good, and of course they like 

 to try the bad, because it isn't for their good. But, 

 except these young gentlemen, no one Avith a stom- 

 ach more delicate than that of a ploAvman or a fox 

 hunter should venture on hot bread in England. 

 — Once a Week. 



^^ A French Avriter says that the greatest bless- 

 ing a Avoman can receive on earth is the continu- 

 ance of the aff"ection of her husband after marriage. 



