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Page 32
_Hard Wheat_, or that grown in hot climates and on fertile soil, has much
more nitrogen than that of colder countries. In hard wheat, in a hundred
parts, twenty-two will be of nitrogen, fifty-nine starch, ten dextrine,
&c, four cellulose, two and a half of fatty matter, and three of mineral,
thus giving many of the constituents found in animal food.
This wheat is taken as bread, white or brown, biscuits, crackers, various
preparations of the grain whether whole or crushed, and among the Italians
as _macaroni_, the most condensed form of cereal food. The best macaroni
is made from the red wheat grown along the Mediterranean Sea, a hot summer
and warm climate producing a grain, rich, as already mentioned, in
nitrogen, and with a smaller proportion of water than farther north. The
intense though short summer of our own far North-west seems to bring
somewhat the same result, but the outer husk is harder. This husk was for
years considered a necessity in all really nutritious bread; and a
generation of vegetarians taking their name from Dr. Graham, and known as
Grahamites, conceived the idea of living upon the wheaten flour in which
husk and kernel were ground together. Now, to stomachs and livers brought
to great grief by persistent pie and doughnuts and some other New-England
wickednesses, these husks did a certain office of stimulation, stirring up
jaded digestions, and really seeming to arrest or modify long-standing
dyspepsia. But they did not know what we do, that this outer husk is a
layer of pure silica, one of the hardest of known minerals. Boil it six
weeks, and it comes out unchanged. Boil it six years, or six centuries,
and the result would be the same. You can not stew a grindstone or bring
granite to porridge, and the wheat-husk is equally obstinate. So long as
enthusiasts ate husk and kernel ground together, little harm was done. But
when a more progressive soul declared that in bran alone the true
nutriment lay, and a host of would-be healthier people proceeded to eat
bran and preach bran, there came a time when eating and preaching both
stopped, from sheer want of strength to go on. The enthusiasts were
literally starving themselves to death--for starvation is by no means mere
deprivation of food: on the contrary, a man may eat heartily to the day of
his death, and feel no inconvenience, so far as any protest of the stomach
is concerned, yet the verdict of the wise physician would be, "Died of
starvation." If the food was unsuitable, and could not be assimilated,
this was inevitable. Blood, muscle, nerve--each must have its fitting
food; and thus it is easy to see why knowledge is the first condition of
healthful living. The moral is: Never rashly experiment in diet till sure
what you are about, and, if you can not for yourselves find out the nature
of your projected food, call upon some one who can.
Where wheat is ground whole, it includes six and a half parts of
heat-producers to one of flesh-formers. The amount of starch varies
greatly. Two processes of making flour are now in use,--one the old, or
St. Louis process; the other, the "new process," giving Haxall flour. In
the former, grindstones were used, which often reached so great a degree
of heat as to injure the flour; and repeated siftings gave the various
grades. In the new, the outer husk is rejected, and a system of knives is
used, which chop the grain to powder, and it is claimed do not heat it.
The product is more starchy, and for this reason less desirable. We eat
far too much heat-producing food, and any thing which gives us the gluten
of the grain is more wholesome, and thus "seconds" is really a more
nutritious flour than the finer grades. Try for yourselves a small
experiment, and you will learn the nature of flour better than in pages of
description.
Take a little flour; wet it with cold water enough to form a dough. Place
it on a sieve, and, while working it with one hand, pour a steady stream
of water over it with another. Shortly you will find a grayish, tough,
elastic lump before you, while in the pan below, when the water is
carefully poured off, will be pure wheat-starch, the water itself
containing all the sugar, dextrine or gum, and mineral matter. This
toughness and elasticity of gluten is an important quality; for in
bread-making, were it not for the gluten, the carbonic-acid gas formed by
the action of yeast on dough would all escape. But, though it works its
way out vigorously enough to swell up each cell, the gluten binds it fast,
and enables us to have a panful of light "sponge," where a few hours
before was only a third of a pan.
Starch, as you have seen, will not dissolve in the cold water. Dry it,
after the water is poured on, and minute grains remain. Look at these
grains under a microscope, and each one is cased in a thick skin, which
cold water can not dissolve. In boiling water, the skins crack, and the
inside swells and becomes gummy. Long boiling is thus an essential for all
starchy foods.
Bread proper is simply flour, water, and salt, mixed to a firm dough and
baked. Such bread as this, Abram gave to his angelic guests, and at this
day the Bedouin Arab bakes it on his heated stone. But bread, as we
understand it, is always lightened by the addition of yeast or some form
of baking-powder, yeast making the most wholesome as well as most
palatable bread. Carbonic-acid gas is the active agent required; and yeast
so acts upon the little starch-granules, which the microscope shows as
forming the finest flour, that this gas is formed and evenly distributed
through the whole dough. The process is slow, and in the action some of
the natural sweetness of the flour is lost. In what is known as a�rated
bread, the gas made was forced directly into the dough, by means of a
machine invented for the purpose; and a very scientific and very good
bread it is. But it demands an apparatus not to be had save at great
expense, and the older fashions give a sufficiently sweet and desirable
bread.
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