IMPORTANCE OF BREAD AS FOOD
1. BREAD is sometimes defined as any form of baked flour, but as the word is commonly understood it means only those forms of baked flour which contain some leavening substance that produces fermentation. The making of bread has come down through the ages from the simplest methods practiced by the most primitive peoples to the more elaborate processes of the present day. In truth, to study the history of bread making would amount to studying the accounts of the progress that has been made by the human race. Still, in order that the production of bread from suitable ingredients may be fully understood, it will be well to note the advancement that has been made.
2. In the earliest times, what was used as bread was made in much the same way as it is today by many uncivilized and semicivilized people. The grain was ground between stones, usually by hand, and then mixed with water to form a dough; then this dough was formed into flat, compact cakes and baked in hot ashes, the result being a food very difficult to digest. Later on, some one discovered that by allowing the dough to stand until fermentation took place and then mixing it with new dough, the whole mass would rise, and also that by subjecting this mass to the action of heat, that is, baking it, the mass would be held in place and become a loaf of raised bread that was lighter and, of course, more digestible. It was this discovery that led up to the modern bread-making processes, in which substances known as leavening agents, or ferments, are used to make bread light, or porous. Chief among the substances is yeast, a microscopic plant that produces fermentation under favorable conditions.
Indeed, so important is this ferment that, in the United States, whenever the term bread is used alone it means yeast, or leavened, bread, whereas, when other leavening agents are used, the bread is referred to as hot bread, or quick bread, as is fully explained in another Section. It will be well to note this fact, for in all cases throughout these cookery lessons yeast, or leavened, bread is always meant when the term bread is used alone.
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