358 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Sept. 21, 1912 
1—Oat-bread in sausage form (Celtic countries), containing some fat-seasoning. Is the most sustaining of all 
breads, and probably the earliest known form extan.t of the so-styled "meat biscuit.” 2—The peculiar sesame- 
seed-covered cracker-breads of Palestine. Turkey and Egypt, affecting the crescent form and many other odd 
shapes. 3—“Lattice-work” army hard-tack crackers of Sicilia. Tripoli, Syria, and central Asia; made in a 
great variety of bread-biscuit forms and sizes. 4 and 5 — The pulped-rye army and travel biscuits of Skan- 
dinavian countries. They are among the crudest-looking and toughest-appearing crackers of the globe, 
yet very nutritious. 
meters to a meter in length. This is also boiled and 
eaten as is a sweet potato. Kasava is also im¬ 
ported in four-inch diameter disks. 
A peculiarity of the kasava bread hard-tack 
is that a use can be made of it of which no 
other breadstuffs of the globe is capable. Thus, 
the vaquero (herder) of the Sierras and Andes 
can make a fairly passable dessert out of kasava 
bits, leavings or other broken fragments, or lack¬ 
ing those, he will deliberately crumple up one 
of the disks and use the pieces. These he drops 
into a two-quart sized seamless leather bag, pours 
in enough cold water to swell the debris to a 
paste, and a few squeezes of the bag in his hand 
completely homogenizes it. In his pocket dish- 
made of non-rusting thin black iron and of uni¬ 
versal use—the vaquero has about half an inch of 
water bubbling atop the embers, already sweet¬ 
ened with a few pieces of raspadura (the small 
cone of pot-boiled crude sugar obtainable at the 
village bazars). Into this goes the kasava mush 
—enough for one human—and he slowly stirs as 
it quickly thickens and puffs up and flops down 
with the escaping steam bubbles. Now its color 
visibly changes to the milky bluish-white semi¬ 
transparency of our own cornstarch, and it is 
done. Then it is placed anywhere to cool off, 
and can be either turned out on to a wood plate 
(or a maize tortilla serving as one) as a molded 
blanc-mange, or eaten from the same vessel in 
which cooked. The latter is the more usual 
course, and the two fingers used (the cloying 
stuff being cold) much as a Chinaman fuses his 
chop-sticks. Those vaqueros have an expressive 
saying that "Dios hecho dedos antes tenedors” 
(God made fingers before forks). 
sfc s|s ^ % sj: 
The chain bread (Duorkin) of the Balkans, 
South Russia and Polonia is sold from the neck 
and arms of itinerant bread peddlers in the 
bazars (market places). In tent life in Balkania, 
the isolated rings, but thicker, are often used 
for fun as quoits, or as temporary awning or 
curtain rings, or for suspending a portiere to 
serve a semblance of privacy for the harem part 
of the natural - black. Angora - worsted tents 
(often as big as one of our houseboats). Then, 
when they get hungry, the ladies of the harem, 
if pushed, chew up their curtain rings! 
This chain bread is useful about camp in 
that it is always cleanly to handle, can be hung 
up anywhere out of the way, dispensing with the 
stuffy bread bag. I have a melancholy recollec¬ 
tion of camp breads impregnated with the nau¬ 
seating odor of foul stale bread air in an in- 
permeable bag. Once on the Trans-Baikal, on the 
borders of Eastern and Central Siberia, I jetti¬ 
soned into the lake near Chita a whole bag of 
engineers' bread because thus fouled. As the 
bread tumbled out and spread upon the water, 
it was a sight to see within five minutes the nib¬ 
bling and bubbling from seething fish life! 
QUEER JAPANESE BISCUITRY. 
In Japan I came across the singular so 
styled bamboo bread, so named from its shape. 
It is already sliced for convenience in detaching 
and eating. It is always sold in strings. These 
are suspended from or carried on the arms of 
the bread peddlers. The bread is very light, and 
is sold by Nipon groceries in Manhattan at 
twenty cents per. It is not made anywhere in 
America, but imported via Yokohama, thus being 
the longest distance imported bread on our 
market. 
Niponese campers carry this along for two 
reasons; as a light cracker with their amber- 
colored delicate tea, or for the soup. It is one 
of the most singular combination cracker and' 
bread foodstuffs on this mundane sphere. The 
statement which has been published that Japan 
is changing from a rice-eating nation to a bread¬ 
eating nation is—well, not so. But in another 
half century things may be different. 
THE BREADS AND BISCUITS OF THE CARAVAN AND 
HAREM (TURKEY). 
The bread of the Holy Land and all Arabic¬ 
speaking countries is ever made in thin disk form, 
and has not varied since the days of Pontius 
Pilate the just. Experienced travelers consider 
this among the best of the breads of the globe. 
Made fresh daily just before noon, it has dried 
to a hard-tack by evening, and becomes the 
Turkish cracker, and is keepable for years. It 
is quite brittle, however, and very hard, and 
requires — like much sailors’ hard-tack — slight 
softening when eaten with the coffee or soup. 
It makes an excellent soup stock. 
There are some Turkish bakeries in Man¬ 
hattan for their own tribes, and they bake the 
bread while you wait near the oven door. Fresh, 
with sweet butter, and a couple of glasses of 
milk, these form an ideal lunch which the 
hungry Yankee dropper-in at nomadic tents in 
the lands of the Faithful will preserve as a 
mental souvenir through life. All these breads 
and hard-tacks are of course used in common 
from harem to hovel in the land of the piping- 
hot Turkey-trot. 
Some types of Turkish small breads—cur¬ 
rent from Stamboul, on the Bosporus, to Cairo 
and Mecca—are also shown. These are sesame- 
seed-covered, affect the crescent and various 
fantastic forms, and are the fresh daily “hot 
rolls" of the Levant countries. Dried out by 
evening, they form a permanent hard-tack or 
cracker for domestic and army use. 
It is a pointer for the camping outer in the 
historic Tigris-Euphrates regions, to always re¬ 
member that the local breads are at once the 
fresh breads and travel breads of the caravan 
parties. And, though plain fare, there’s more 
good plain solid stock and staying power in them 
than in the whole gamut of our fancy crackers. 
HARD-TACK PLATE-LIKE BREADS USED AS EXTEM¬ 
PORE DISHES (SCANDINAVIA). 
The unmilled or just pulped rye hard-tack 
breads of Scandinavian countries are met with 
by all observant tourists to the midnight sun 
land, on the coastwise steamers, among the fisher 
folk, at the isolated inns in the fjord regions, and 
scattering. It is the only bread of the Norse 
timber parties, surveyors, railroad workers, and 
in fact all outdoor life. Note the hole in the 
middle of the biscuit. This was not intended 
for the purpose to which the forester and camper 
utilizes it—as to be mentioned now—but for con¬ 
venience in racking away on poles in farm houses 
and suspending near the roof. The camp worker 
or camp sporter, however, uses it as a makeshift 
plate for his bits of hot stewed meat or steak 
or broiled fish, finding the center hole useful for 
holding the plate more steadily, per stretched-out 
digit, much as an artist handles his color palette. 
These pulped rye hard-tacks are very satis¬ 
fying and nutritious, and at the same time useful 
"interiorly” (due to the coarseness of the grain) 
as a slight aperitive. Hence their use by old and 
young alike. 
A wheat flour macaroni hard-tack “knacker- 
brod" is also made, and can be used eaten dry as 
it is, or put into soups. It retains well the 
macaroni-like flavor in either use. (Note: The 
word macaroni is not of Italian origin, as dic- 
tionarily supposed, but is Asiatic. Both Nipon 
and the present Republic of China have had 
macaroni, since time lost in antiquity, in many 
forms, as rice macaroni, bean macaroni, buck¬ 
wheat macaroni, etc., and they themselves call it 
macaroni, spelling the word with a k, or at least 
their symbols give the power of k. All these 
(Continued on page 378 .) 
