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WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
tion, and their power of imparting to the dough that tenacity 
necessary to prevent the escape of carbonic acid that it may 
raise the loaf, is destroyed. This injurious effect, only in 
an exaggerated form, is familiar to all in bread made from grown 
wheat, as all these changes are produced in the process of ger¬ 
mination. Bread made from the flour of such wheat is moist, 
sweet and mucilaginous, and is invariably wanting in that light, 
porous, spongy texture which is characteristic of good bread. 
It is also darker in color, a change that always accompanies 
the conversion of starch into sugar. 
To prevent these injurious effects, various substitutes for 
fermentation have been proposed, by which the carbonic acid 
necessary to give lightness to the dough, is furnished from an 
artificial source. 
The means most usually adopted for giving the desired 
lightness to unfermented bread, is to add bi-carbonate of soda 
and hydrochloric acid, in proper proportions to the flour, in¬ 
stead of salt, when by the action of the acid upon the sodic 
carbonate, salt is formed and the liberated carbonic acid gives 
to the dough its desired porosity. In theory this process is 
all that might be desired, while practically it can hardly be 
regarded as successful. That it has never been more gener¬ 
ally adopted may perhaps be partly owing to the difficulty of 
measuring and weighing all the ingredients, especially the acid 
and soda, both of which must be used in exact proportions, 
that the bread may neither be sour on the one hand, nor alka¬ 
line on the other. Another difficulty is the procuring of acid 
entirely free from injurious impurities, as all commercial acid 
contains a small amount of arsenic from which it can be sepa¬ 
rated only with great difficulty. 
Another process, and one in which the manufacture of bread 
in large quantities, as in the bakeries of large cities, has been 
much more successful, is that used in the making of “ aerated 
bread.” By this process, flour mixed with a proper propor¬ 
tion of salt, is put in a strong air-tight cylinder, where it is 
mixed by machinery, under a pressure of about one hundred 
