Bread.
A mixture of flour and water, baked to the extent of suppressing its clamminess. In the Old Testament we find that bread-making was a duty performed by the mistress of the family, — Sarah; by one of the daughter, — the muchabused Tamar; by servants, — as those captives referred to by Samuel, who are prospectively made to serve as “confectionaries, cooks, and bakers” ; by an officer of the household, — Pharaoh's servant, the chief baker; by tradesmen, — as the bakers referred to by Hosea. The Israelites ate leavened bread except on peculiar occasions. The Bedouin of the present day, as his ancestors did, cooks his unleavened bread in the embers, generally between layers of dung. We are not destitute of the same fuel on the Western plains, but delicately term it bois de vache, or, more squarely, buffalo-chips. When the Arab bakes a pasty bread on a pan or griddle, he calls it a flita. Without intending to talk Arabic, we do the same sometimes. The Egyptian like the London bakers kneaded bread with the feet. The practice is probably more general than we know, or like to believe. In a little model of a house found by Mr. Salt in Egypt, and now in the British Museum, a doll-woman stands in the court-yard in the act of rolling dough. The mixing-trough is attached at the end of the table, and the quiet little doll, which may have amused the children of the time of Moses, has maintained the position of action for near forty centuries, and is now viewed by the juveniles of a country which was alternate forest and morass for two thousand years after the little figure was started at her protracted employment. Ching-Noung, the successor of Fohi, is reputed to have first taught the art of making bread from wheat and wine from rice, 1998 B. C. This was the era of Terah, the father of Abraham, of the shepherd kings of Egypt, and of the fabulous wars of the Titans in Greece. A few years subsequently, 1913 B. C., Melchisedek brought out wine and bread to Abram and blessed him (Gen. XIV. 18). Fifteen years afterward we find Abraham giving three strangers a morsel of bread to stay their stomachs, while his wife prepared hot cakes made out of fine meal, kneaded, and no doubt cooked in the ashes, as they had not then seen the Egyptian plan of cooking in ovens. This was served up with butter, — probably bonnyclabber or curds, — milk, and veal. The Hebrew bread was a flat cake, baked on the hearth or on a metallic plate. It was broken, not cut, and may have had indentations to form lines of easy fracture. Thus may have arisen Paul's remark, — “We, being many, are one bread” (1 Cor. x. 17). In the time of Pliny we find that, though bread was made from a variety of grains, yet that wheat was held in the highest estimation: the wheat of Italy ranking first for weight and whiteness, while that of Sicily, one of the granaries of Rome, stood third, Boeotian wheat being preferred to it. He states that the weight of all commissary bread exceeded that of the flour from which it was made by one third, and this is still held to be the proper percentage of gain in well-made bread from good flour. The German proportion, stated by Kohler in his Rechenmeister, is 156 pounds of dough, and 153 pounds 11 1/2 ounces of bread from 100 pounds of flour. The Romans appear to have leavened their bread with preparations similar to that known in some places as “salt rising,” instead of yeast. Pliny says that in Gaul and Spain, where they make a drink (beer) by steeping grain in water, they employ the foam which thickens on the surface (yeast) as a leaven, and that consequently the bread in those countries is lighter than that made elsewhere. He must mean in proportion to its bulk, and not that a certain quantity of flour would produce a less weight of bread. The Roman leaven is described as being made from millet mixed with grape-juice, which it is said would keep a whole year. Fine wheat bran was also employed; this was mixed with white must (or grapejuice) three days old, then dried in the sun and made into small cakes. For making bread, these cakes were first soaked in water boiled with the finest spelt-flour, and then mixed with the dough. These kinds of leaven could only be made during the vintage, but there was another kind, made from barley and water, which could be prepared at any time; this was made up in cakes of two pounds' weight, which were baked until they became of a reddish-brown color, when they were put in close vessels and allowed to turn sour; when wanted for leaven, they were steeped in water. Leaven, for immediate use, was also prepared by kneading some of the flour, without salt, boiling it to the consistency of porridge, and keeping it till it began to turn sour; or the bread was leavened by means of some of the dough left over purposely from the day before, as among the ancient Hebrews. In the maritime districts the flour was mixed with [361] sea-water, to economize salt; and in the preparation of some kinds of flour, according to Pliny, the bran was first taken off the berry by trituration in mortars containing brickbats and sand. His translators have rather absurdly made him say that bricks and sand were ground up with the grain. In one species of bread, called atica, which he mentions as being peculiarly wholesome and palatable, a species of chalk found in the hill Leucorgeum, between Naples and Puteoli, was employed for imparting whiteness and crispness. Their bread was probably too moist for our taste, rather a pasty mass, somewhat better than the common puls, which resembled our paste or gruel, a sort of hasty-pudding, and which formed the staple of the farinaceous diet of the Romans. There were no professional bakers in Rome till after the war with King Perseus, more than 580 years after the building of the city. The occupation formerly belonged to the women. They ate their bread moist; it was sometimes kneaded with the must of the grape, with raisin-juice, or with butter for shortening, or with eggs and milk, and often soaked in milk and honey before eating. Vinegar, to soak the bread, was a regular ration with the Roman soldiery. It is much older than that, however: Boaz said unto Ruth, “Eat of thy bread, and dip thy morsel in the vinegar.” After the conquest of Macedon, 148 B. C., Greek bakers came to Rome and monopolized the business. Loaves of bread, or their pseudomorphs, are found in the excavations of Pompeii, partially buried A. D. 79. Bread was made with yeast by the English bakers in 1634. Was made by machinery in England in 1858. Was artificially inflated with carbonic-acid gas, with which the water of mixing was impregnated, by Dr. Dauglish, in 1859. Aerated bread was made in the United States prior to 1854. |
| Bread-knife. |
