The French, who particularly excel in the art of baking, have a great many different kinds of bread. Their pain his, or brown bread, is the coarsest kind of all, and is made of coarse groats mixed with a portion of white flour. The pain bis blanc is a kind of bread be tween white and brown, made of white flour and fine goats. The pain Haile, or white bread, is made of white flour, shaken through a sieve after the finest flour has been separated. The pain mollet, or soft bread, is made of the purest flour without any admixture. The pain chaland, or customers bread, is a very white kind of bread, made of pounded paste. Pain chapele, is a small kind of bread, with a well beaten and very light paste, seasoned with butter or milk. This name is also given to a small bread, from which the thickest crust has been removed by a knife. Pain de chapitre is a superior kind of pain chapele. Pain cornu, is a name given by the French bakers to a kind of bread made with four corners, and sometimes more. Of all the kinds of small bread, this has the strongest and firmest paste. Pain a la reine, queen's bread, pain a la Sigovie, pain chapele, and pain cornu, are all small kinds of bread, differing only in the lightness or thickness of the paste. The pain de Go nesse is said to excel all others, on account of the quali ty of the water of Gonesse, about three leagues from Paris. In addition to these different kinds of bread, we may mention the pain d'epice, or spice bread, made of barley meal, seasoned with spices, and kneaded with the scum of sugar, and generally with yellow honey. This spice bread appears to have been known to the ancients, particularly the Asiatics. The Rhodians, we are told, had a kind of bread sweetened with honey, so exquisitely pleasant, that it was eaten with other de licacies, after dinner, by way of desert.
In this country (Britain) we have fewer varieties of bread, and these differ chiefly in their degrees of purity. Our white or fine bread is made of the purest flour ; cur wheaten bread, of flour with a mixture of the finest bran; and our household bread, of the whole substance of the grain without the separation either of the fine flour or coarse bran. We have also symnel bread, manchet or roll bread, and French bread, which are all made of the purest flour from the finest wheat ; the roll bread being improved by the addition of milk, and the French bread by the addition of eggs and butter. To these may be added gingerbread, made of white bread, with almonds, liquorice, aniseed, rose water, and sugar or treacle ; and inaslisi bread, made of wheat and rye, or sometimes of wheat and barley. We have various kinds of small bread, having various names, according to their ious forms. They are, in general, extremely light, and are sweeten ed with sugar, currants, and other palatable ingredients. In Scotland we have a bread called short br,id, which is a pretty thick paste, made with flour and butter, and generally sweetened with sugar, and seasoned with orange peal and various kinds of spices.
The process of making bread is nearly the same in all the countries of modern Europe ; though the mate rials of which it is composed vary with the farinaceous productions of different climates and soils. The flour of wheat is most generally employed for this purpose, wherever that vegetable can be reared This flour is composed of a small portion of mucilaginous saccha rine matter, soluble in cold water, which it may be separated by evaporation; of a great quantity of starch, which is scarcely soluble in cold water, but capable of combining with that fluid by means of heat; and an adhesive grey substance called gluten, insoluble in water, ardent spirit, oil, or ether, and resembling an animal substance in many of its properties. Flour, kneaded with water,
forms a tough indigestible paste, containing all the con stituent parts which we have enumerated. Heat produ ces a considerable change on the glutinous part of this compound, and renders it more easy of mastication and digestion. Still, however, it continues heavy and tough, compared with bread which is raised by leaven or yeast. Leaven is nothing more than a piece of dough, kept in a warm place till it undergoes a process of fermentation ; swelling, becoming spongy, and full of air bubbles, and at length disengaging an acidulous and spirituous vapour, and contracting a sour taste. When this leaven is mingled in proper proportions with other dough, it makes it rise more readily and effectually than it would do alone, and gives it at the sante time a greater degree of firmness. Upon the quality of the leaven employ ed, the quality of the bread materially depends. To ob tain it in its proper state, it ought to be remembered, that good leaven is dough which has fermented and be come sour, but is yet in its progress towards greater acidity. If it be permitted to acquire all the sourness of which it is susceptible, it begins to putrify, and has a very different effect upon the dough from that which is produced by leaven in the proper state of fermentation. If dough or paste be left to undergo a spontaneous de composition in an open vessel, the component parts are affected in different ways ; the saccharine part is con verted into an ardent spirit, the mucilage tends to acidity and moulding, and the gluten verges towards putridity. This incipient fermentation makes it more light and di gestible, and by disengaging the confined air, renders it more porous, and considerably enlarges its bulk. Baking puts a stop to this process, by evaporating a great part of the moisture, which favours the chemical attraction, and perhaps by changing still farther the nature of the component parts. In this state, however, bread will not possess the requisite uniformity ; for some parts may be mouldy, while others remain in the state of dough. To promote uniform fermentation, is the great use °Heaven. A small portion of it is intimately blended with a quan tity of other dough ; and this, by its union with the mass, and the aid of a gentle heat, accelerates the fermentation, which it promotes through the whole mass at once ; and as soon as the dough has acquired a due increase of bulk from the carbonic acid gas, which endeavours to escape, it is judged to be sufficiently fermented, and fit for the oven ; the heat of which, by driving off the wa ter, checks the fermentation. By the fermentation of the dough, mixed with leaven, a quantity of carbonic acid gas is extracted from the flour, but remains con fined by the tenacity of the mass, in which it is ex panded by the heat, and thus raises the dough. This is also the cause of the porosity or sponginess of baked bread.