THE CHEMISTRY OF BREAD-MAKING 



CHARLES H. La WALL 

 Delivered March 19, 19 17 



THE chemistry of bread-making is a subject which depends for its scope 

 much upon what is considered as the Umiting definition of bread. In 

 the broadest and figurative senses bread may be understood to mean all 

 food-stuffs eaten by man. In a more restricted sense it may mean a food made 

 of any kind of flour or meal, as wheat bread and corn bread. In the present 

 study it is understood as the product from wheat or rye, baked into loaves or 

 smaller individual portions termed rolls, biscuits, etc., and of a porous or vesic- 

 ular character, giving it the quality commonly known as lightness. 



The word ''bread" is comparatively modern, but etymologists differ as to 

 its origin, some holding that it is derived from the same root as "brew," others 

 that it comes from a Teuton word meaning a fragment or piece; the latter 

 view is supported by the fact that in all Teutonic languages the original word 

 for bread is equivalent to our word "loaf." 



Bread-making dates back to the earHest records of unciviHzed man, the 

 Swiss lake-dwellers of the stone age having been found to be acquainted with 

 the making of a crude form of unleavened bread. This compact form was 

 probably the earliest known, presumably sun-dried at first, and later baked in 

 hot ashes or on hot stones. The hearth naturally evolved into the oven, which 

 was known to the Chaldeans about 2500 B. C. The Chinese attribute to one 

 Ching Fong, who lived about 2000 B.C., the art of husbandry and the method 

 of bread-making from wheat. The Egyptians greatly improved the art, and 

 were familiar with the use of wheat, barley, and other cereal flours. The 

 Greeks attributed the origin of bread to Pan, the god of pastures, forests, and 

 flocks, whence our word "panary," commonly used in the phrase "panary 

 fermentation " as applied to bread. The Romans still further developed bread- 

 making, and it is in their time that the first reference to public bakehouses is 

 found. Hebrew writers refer to both leavened and unleavened bread, as does 

 also Pliny, who differentiates the former into the kind in which wine "must" 

 is used as the leavening agent, and that in which the "barm," or yeast from 

 beer brewing, is used. 



77 



