316 
WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
gastric juices, the wholesome properties of bread depend upon 
its proper mechanical structure, as well as upon its chemical 
composition. It needs to be so soft as to admit of easy masti¬ 
cation, and sufficiently porous to furnish a large surface for 
the action of the digestive fluids. To furnish these conditions 
as aids to the process of digestion, and at the same time to make 
bread that is agreeable to the taste, are the objects of the va¬ 
rious manipulations through which flour passes from the barrel 
to the finished loaf with its light, soft, spongy crumb, and its 
rich brown crust. 
When flour is mixed with water, and baked at a tempera¬ 
ture so low as to be little more than a thorough drying of the 
dough, it forms a hard, almost vitreous mass that is insipid to 
the taste, and as the starch has not been changed, or at most 
but slightly changed, is not easy of digestion. Such is the 
unleavened bread of the Jews, and the sea-biscuit which on 
account of its dryness and easy preservation, may be carried 
without change upon long voyages by sea or land. This 
bread containing as it does, all the nutritive material of the 
flour, is highly nutritious, yet from its solidity and on account 
of its insolubility, it has a starchy insipid taste. 
The term bread is now almost universally confined to the 
loaf produced by baking a mixture of flour with water of the 
consistence of paste or dough, which is made light and porous 
by carbonic acid gas generated within the mass by fermenta¬ 
tion, or set free from materials used in its manufacture. The 
difference between bread and biscuit, consists in the lightness 
of the 11 raised ” loaf, in place of the more dense cake pro¬ 
duced when the dough is baked as soon as mixed. 
The skill of the breadmaker consists, to a great extent, in 
the proper regulation of the process of fermentation, that it 
may continue sufficiently long to produce the desired lightness, 
and be checked before the mass is too light, or the acid fer¬ 
mentation has begun, which gives a disagreeably sour taste 
and smell to the bread. 
To fully understand the cause of the lightness of the bread, 
