It is going to be helpful to offer right here some remarks by the good scientist, Liebig, on one of the best course of of constructing bread: — “Many chemists are of opinion that flour by the fermentation within the dough loses considerably of its nutritious constituents, from a decomposition of the gluten; and it has been proposed to render the dough porous with out fermentation via substances which when introduced into contact yield carbonic acid. However on a more in-depth investigation of the method this view seems to have little basis.

“When flour is made into dough with water, and allowed to face at a mild heat, a change takes place within the gluten of the dough, much like that which happens after the steeping of barley within the graduation of germination within the seeds within the preparation of malt; and in consequence of this variation the starch (the larger a part of it in malting; in dough solely a small share) is transformed into sugar, a small portion of the gluten passes into the soluble state, during which it acquires the properties of albumen, however by this variation it loses nothing no matter of its digestibility or of its nutritive worth. “We can’t carry flour and water collectively with out the formation of sugar from the starch; and it’s this sugar and never the gluten of which a component enters into fermentation, and is resolved into alcohol and carbonic acid.

“We all know that malt just isn’t inferior in nutritive energy to barley from which it’s derived, though the gluten contained in it has undergone a way more profound alteration than that of flour within the dough, and expertise has taught us that in distilleries the place spirits are created from potatoes, the plastic constituents of the potatoes, and of the malt which is added after having gone by way of all the course of the processes of the formation and the fermentation of the sugar, have misplaced little or nothing of their nutritive worth. It’s sure subsequently, that within the making of bread there is no such thing as a lack of gluten.

“Solely a small a part of the starch of the flour is consumed within the manufacturing of sugar, and the fermentative course of just isn’t solely the only and greatest but additionally the most cost effective of all of the strategies which have been advisable for rendering bread porous. Apart from, chemical preparations ought by no means, as a rule, to be advisable by chemists for culinary functions, since they rarely are discovered pure in abnormal commerce. For instance, the business crude muriatic acid which it is suggested so as to add to the dough together with bicarbonate of soda, is at all times most impure, and sometimes comprises arsenic, in order that the chemist by no means makes use of it with out a tedious strategy of purification for his functions, that are of far much less significance than making bread gentle and porous.

“To make bread cheaper it has been proposed so as to add to dough potato starch or dextrine, rice, the pressed pulp of turnips, pressed uncooked potatoes, or boiled potatoes; however all these additions solely diminish the nutritive worth of bread. Potato starch, dextrine, or the pressed pulp of turnips, and beet-root, when added to flour, yield a combination the nutritive worth of which is the same as all the potato, or decrease nonetheless, however nobody can take into account the change of grain or flour right into a meals of equal worth with potatoes or rice an enchancment. The true downside is to render the potatoes or rice comparable or equal to wheat of their results, and never vice versa It’s higher below all circumstances to boil the potatoes and eat them as such, than so as to add potatoes or potato starch to flour earlier than it’s made into bread, which ought to be strictly prohibited by police regulation on account of the dishonest to which it will inevitably give rise.”