The times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1897-1901, 1901-03-03
MAKING NUTRITIOUS BREAD
Interesting Results of Recent Elk
periments.
An Agricultural Department Expert
on the Subject of the "StaT of
Life''-Its Uses in All Ages-Modern
Bakery a Place Worth Visiting.

The Agricultural Department has been
conducting some valuable experiments
upon common foods with view to discov-
ering the best manner of their prepara-
tion. The staff of life" has naturally
come in for a large measure OF notice, and
some notable facts in regard to the way
ii should be made have been developed.
ITO prepare the grain for bread" says
one of the experts Of the department, sit
is usually cleansed, crushed, and sifted
into a fine, soft powder which We call
flour. Among the various fours the
preference should of course be given to
the one which yields the most nutritious
leaf for The least money. The nutritive
value of bread depends not only on its
chemical composition, but also on it's
digestibility, and this, in turn, depends
largely on the lightness of the loaf. 1t
is the gluten in flour which gives it the
power of stretching and rising as the gas
from the yeast expands within IL and
hence OF making a light loaf Rye, bar
ley, and oats have less gluten than wheat,
and maize has none. and therefore wheat,
despite its higher cost, yields the NEST nu-
triment for a given sum.
lit is possible that of the various kinds
OF wheat -four those containing part of the
bran-entire wheat and graham iours-
furnish the body with more mineral mat
tiers than fine white -four. but they prob
ably do not yield more digestible protein,
as was formerly supposed. II seems safe
that, as far as We yet know, white flour,
for a given amount of money, yields the
most actual nourishment with the various
food ingredients and in the best proportion
The lightness and sweetness of bread de-
-pends as much on the way in which 1t is
made rs on the materials used The
greatest care should be taken in prepar-
ing and baking the dough, and in cooking
and keeping the finished bread. Heavy
badly raised bread is a very dangerous
food, and unfortunately very common, and
probably more Indignation has been caus-
ed by it than by all other indifferently
cooked foods put together.
AS compared with most meats and veg
etables bread has practically no waste
and is very completely digested. II is too
poor in protein to be ittingly used alone,
but when taken with due quantities of
other foods it is invaluable
There is hardly any food, except milk,
which is SO universally used as bread,
and not alone is il now known almost
everywhere and among all peoples but
since history first began it has in some
form or other made one of the staples
OF diet. In the earliest historical records
it is spoken Of, and the wild tribes which
today inhabit South Africa know some
thing OF its use. OF course, the bread
made By the Kafir al the present time
or By the American Indian 300 years ago
is very differnt from our own. 1t is in
terestiEg TO trace the relationship be-
tween the breadmaking processes of Civ
en- peoples and their rank in the scale of
civilization.
The Kaffir, for instance, simply grinds
his grain between two stones, makes a
paste of this meal and water, and bakes
it in the ashes of his camp fire. Israel
in Egypt ate leayened bread: the ancient
Greeks cultivated the yeast plan; in Pom
peii an oven was found containing eighty
one loayes of bread not unlike our own;
and so on to the mammoth bakeries and
innumerable fancy breads of our own large
towns. Such a classification would not be
absolutely absurd, for except among the
lowest savages and in the EXTREMIST eli
mates some kind of grain is recognized as
q necessary food, and bread furnishes it
in one of its most convenient forms-that