170 



Popular Science Monthly 



A Boy's Street Boat 



ECHOING the spirit of his fore- 

 fathers who crossed the bleak 

 prairies of the west in the days of the 

 CaHfornia gold rush, when sails were 

 occasionally raised on the prairie schoon- 

 ers to help the horses along, a New York 

 boy has added a leg o' mutton sail to the 

 foot power driving equipment of his 

 "scooter" with the result that he has 

 been several times in danger of breaking 

 the speed laws of his city. 



With front and rear wheels oiled well, 



With the aid of a brisk breeze, this 

 scooter can break the city's speed laws 



and a brisk breeze blowing, he can travel 

 at a twenty-mile-an-hour clip without 

 much difficulty, despite the crude con- 

 struction of his vehicle. The front 

 wheels are those of a discarded baby 

 carriage, while those in the rear are 

 rollers taken from skates. The name of 

 this conveyance is the "windmobile," 

 which is at least as happy as the names 

 of apartment houses and Pullman cars. 



Bread Without Grain Flour 



CHEMISTRY in Germany is strug- 

 gling to produce a substitute for 

 grain flour in making a palatable and 



nourishing bread. The recent potato 

 harvest being large, most research- 

 workers have sought to use flour from 

 grain in place of potato starch. The dif- 

 ficulty is that when bread contains an 

 unusual proportion of potato starch, or 

 even of rice or tapioca starch, it lacks 

 the sponginess produced in ordinary 

 bread through the carbonic acid devel- 

 oped by the fermentation of yeast or by 

 baking powder. 



In an article on the subject in Umschau 

 some account is given of the experiments 

 made to overcome the objections to the 

 use of grain flour substituted. It had been 

 proved that the defect in pure starch 

 flour for bread-making is the lack of glu- 

 ten, for the elasticity and toughness of 

 ordinary dough are caused by the albu- 

 men contained in gluten. A chemist 

 named Fornet claims to have found a 

 substance which, when mixed with dough 

 from starch flour, produces the physical 

 characteristics of gluten. The dough is 

 raised with yeast, can be made from 

 all kinds of starch, and looks like ordin- 

 ary white bread. The bread has been 

 found edible at the army front when 

 several days old. The substance dis- 

 covered is not yet announced. The fa- 

 mous chemist, Wilhelm Ostwald, has 

 proved that the albumen of gluten is 

 coagulated by heat during baking and 

 has used Gigg albumen instead with or 

 without a gas-producer, as yeast or bak- 

 ing powder, with good results, but the 

 process is too costly. Walter Ostwald 

 and A. Riedel have substituted thick 

 starch pastes for the various albumens 

 in the dough. These pastes resemble 

 gluten in the qualities of elasticity and 

 impermeabilit}^ to gas and are also cheap. 

 The leaven is made of potato flour, milk, 

 and pressed hops ; baking powder can 

 also be used. The inner friction of the 

 starch paste produces in baking the nec- 

 essary puffiness and porosity of the 

 dough, and the loaf shows an elastic, 

 porous crumb of fairly normal thick- 

 ness. 



Wilhelm Ostwald also substituted 

 casein dissolved in ammonium carbonate 

 for gluten. In baking, the ammonia and 

 carbonic gases present acted as leaven 

 while the casein replaced the gluten of 

 ordinary white flour. 



