188

BREAD.

Butter

2 oz.

Carbon, magnesia

01

Tartaric acid

0|

Ginger

0J

Cinnamon

01

Nulmeg

1

This compound has rather more butter than common thin gingerbread.

I shall here insert a passage from my Dictionary of Chemistry, as published in 1821;as it may prove interesting to many of my present readers.

“ Under Process of Baking, in the Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica, wehave the following statement:—‘An ounce of alum is then dissolved over the fire in atin pot, and the solution poured into a large tub, called by the bakers the seasoning-tub. Four pounds and a half of salt are likewise put into the tub, and a pailful of hotwater .’—Foot note on this passage .—‘ In London , where the goodness of bread is esti-mated entirely by its whiteness, it is usual with those bakers who employ flour of an in-ferior quality, to add as much alum as common salt to the dough ; or, in other words,the quantity of salt added is diminished one half, and the deficiency supplied by an equalweight of alum. This improves the look of the bread very much, rendering it muchwhiter and firmer.’ ”

In a passage which we shall presently quote, our author represents the bakers ofLondon in a conspiracy to supply the citizens with bad bread. We may hence inferthat the full allowance he assigns of 2j pounds of alum for every 2j pounds of salt, willbe adopted in converting the sack of flour into loaves. But as a sack of flour weighs 280pounds, and furnishes on an average 80 quartern loaves, we have 2} pounds divided by80, or - ™° gra "' s = 197 grains, for the quantity present, by this writer, in a London quartern loaf. Yet in the very same page (39th of vol. ii.) we have the followingpassage: “ Alum is not added by all bakers. The writer of this article has "been assuredby several bakers of respectability, both in Edinburgh and Glasgow , on whose testimonyhe relies, and who made excellent bread, that they never employed any alum. The rea-son for adding it given by the London bakers is, that it renders the bread whiter, and en-ables them to separate readily the loaves from each other. This addition has been allegedby medical men, and is considered by the community at large, as injurious to the health,by occasioning constipation. But if we consider the small quantity of this salt added bythe baker, not quite 5J grains to a quartern loaf, we will hot readily admit these allega-tions. Suppose an individual to eat the seventh part of a quartern loaf a day, he wouldonly swallow eight tenths of a grain of alum, or, in reality', not quite so much as half agrain; for one half of this salt consists of water. It seems absurd to suppose that half agrain of alum, swallowed at different times during the course of a day, should occasionconstipation.” Is it not more absurd to state 2 j pounds or 36 ounces, as the alum adul-teration of a sack of flour by the London bakers, and within a few periods to reduce theadulteration to one ounce ?

That this voluntary abstraction of §§■ of the alum, and substitution of superior andmore expensive flour, is not expected by him from the London bakers, is sufficiently evi-dent from the following story. It would appear that one of his friends had invented anew yeast for fermenting dough, by mixing a quart of beer barm with a paste made often pounds of flour and two gallons of boiling water, and keeping this mixture warm forsix or eight hours.

“Yeast made in this way,” says he, “answers the purposes of the baker much betterthan brewers’ yeast, because it is clearer, and free from the hop mixture which sometimesinjures the yeast of the brewer. Some years ago the bakers of London , sensible of thesuperiority of this artificial yeast, invited a company of manufacturers from Glasgow to establish a manufactory of it in London , and promised to use no other. About5,0001. accordingly was laid out on buildings and materials, and the manufactory wasbegun on a considerable scale. The ale-brewers, finding their yeast, for which they haddrawn a good price, lie heavy on their hands, invited all the journeymen bakers to theircellars, gave them their full of ale, and promised to regale them in that manner everyday, provided they would force their masters to take all their yeast from the ale-brewers.The journeymen accordingly declared, in a body, that they would work no more for theirmasters unless they gave up taking any more yeast from the manufactory. The masterswere obliged to comply; the new manufactory was stopped, and the inhabitants of Lon-don were obliged to continue to eat worse bread, because it was the interest of the ale-brewers to sell the yeast. Such is the influence of journeymen bakers in the metropolisof England!" ■ .

This doleful diatribe seems rather extravagant; for surely beer yeast can derivenothing noxious to a porter drinking people, from a slight impregnation of hops; w ’it must form probably a more energetic ferment than the fermented paste of the ncompany, which at any rate could be prepared in six or eight hours by any baker wn