The daily progressive-miner., 1915-11-26
GERMANY MAKES
 BREAD OF POTATOES
INGENUITY HAS SUCCEEDED IN MAKING BREAD WITHOUT
 ANY GRAINS


 it is tasty and nutritious and when buttered one cannot tell the differ ence between it and the real wheaton article And it. would thus appear that the German nation is safe from starvation so longd as it possesses potatoes an air! Experimental sta- tions have worked out the problem, and A. Fornet, in the Chemiker Zeitung of Berlin, has given some very interesting facts concerning the study of nutritive values and the obstacles overcome in making this ideal wartime bread, which, in the coming time of peace, may figure importantly in the cost of living.
 Considerable interest has been aroused" says the writer, "by the announcement that great Berlin firm of restaurateurs had succeeded in baking bread minus wheat flour as a constituent. Potato starch and rice starch took the place of wheat flour, giving an uncommon white ness to the bread All kinds of this bread, however, had the serious dis advantage of having too much weight by far for it's volume. More over, the crumb formed an almost solid mass, being almost or quite lacking in aeration."
 As expert housewives and bakers know, the aeration, porousness or lightness of good bread is the result of the expansion or "blowing up" of the dough by the pressure of the carbon dioxide or "carbonic acid gas," which is formed when the yeast begins to work"
 The tiny particles of dough are literally blown apart so that they are separted by tiny cavities or pores, the principal being the same as when child inserts a pipe into a bowl of soapy water and blows his breath into it till it becomes mass of tiny bubbles.
 But this aeration is possible only when the dough is not too short" as the expert says.
 In other words, the dough must be elastic and tenacious so that it will not allow the bubbles of carbon diozide to escape until they have done their work, that is, until the pressure of the gas has swelled up the gummy mass of the dough and made it porous and Tight"
 This indispensable elasticity is due to the glutens. By their gummy nature the pressure of the air and carbon dioxide is sufficiently re- tarded for the aeration to take place. But the substitute breads are almost entirely lacking in gluten, hence their failure to resist the pressure of the expanding carbon dioxide long enough to become porous.
 The problem had it's scientific side and was promptly taken up by the bakers of the Experimental Institute for Grain Products.
 Most of them failed in their first attempt to make light bread with out ordinary grain flour, but better success crowned their efforts when they began to mix with the dough materials which would give it physi- cal properties like those of gulten, Surprisingly good bread being thus obtained"
 "The bread thus made" says MT. . Fome', ''is about as porous as wkea bread, the crumb is similar lo that of semmelbrot, and the crust cannot be told from that of ordinary lSummelbrotchen. '
 'sAs for the taste, it must be con fessed that pure wheat bread has the advantage. The first speciment baked by some of the big firms found few admirers because of the poor flavor.
 "Of the breads now made it may be said they are good to eat even when dry, and when buttered or used for sandwiches no one who tasted could tell the difference be- tween wheat bread and the new grainless bread"
 The chief constituent of this new bread is starch, which can be raised in Germany in unlimited quantities, the "best form for Germany beding the potato-earbohydrate.
 MT. Fornet refers triumphantly to the recent achievement of the Berlin Institute for Fermentation Industries in forming an albumen by the union af amonia with starch, particulars of which process have not yet been made public.
 Since the great chemiss Habe1 has taught the world how to make amonia synthetically from the at mosphere it would appear, thec- retically at least, that the German nation is safe from starvation as long as it possesses potatoes and air!