Modern Bakery Shops, Products, Mate Modern bakery shops in America, equipped with costly and intricate machinery, have attained to the dignity of factories with a daily consumption of flour ranging from 20 to 200 barrels, and a daily output of over 5,000 to 50,000 loaves of bread. Bread, rolls, biscuits and cakes are all produced on a large scale and of such quality and price that it is no longer an object of the housewife in our larger cities to have the baking of these products done at home, excepting perhaps out of sentimental promptings, say the wedding cake or the birth day cake. Wheat bread is the chief product of the modern bakery, then rye bread, then soda biscuits, rolls, cake and sweet biscuits. Over 50,000,000 barrels of wheat flour are consumed in the manufacture of wheat products in the United States annually, of which about 35,000, 000 go into wheat bread; 5000,000 into soda biscuits; 2,500,000 into rolls, 2,500,000 into cakes and sweet biscuits. The amount of rve flour for rye bread and other uses is approxi mately 10,000,000 barrels. Into the making of various products the following materials enter: Wheat bread.— For one barrel of wheat flour, 196 pounds, about 110 pounds of water; 2 to 4 pounds of shortening (lard, fat or vege table oil) ; 2Y2 to 4 pounds of salt ; about 5 to 6 pounds of cane sugar; pounds of malt ex tract; 2Y2 pounds of pressed yeast, small quan tities of milk.
Whole rye bread (pumpernickel).— For one barrel of whole rye our of 196 pounds, about 90 pounds of water; 2Y2 to 4 pounds suet; about 2 pounds cane sugar; 1 pound compressed yeast. The dough is aerated by employing sour dough for leavening, the leaven being daily mixed with more dough, the mass ripening again in 24 hours or over night to more leaven; the process being kept up indeterminately often without adding yeast, as this develops in the sour dough.
Mixed rye bread.— Generally rye flour is mixed with from 25 to 50 per cent of wheat flour, in order to improve color and aeration. Naturally the characteristic quality of rye bread is lost with a larger percentage of admixture.
Rolls.—The same material as for wheat bread is used, with larger quantities of milk.
Soda biscuits.— Wheat flour, 1 barrel; water, 100 pounds; salt, 2 pounds; yeast, IA pound; bicarbonate of soda in sufficient quantity to neutralize acidity formed in the dough. The brittle nature of the soda biscuit as compared with bread is due entirely to the process of manufacture.
Cake.— Wheat flour 10 pounds' and milk or milk and water 5 pounds or in the proportion like wheat bread; butter or lard, 2 pounds per 10 pounds of flour; eggs, 2 pounds; a little salt; sugar, 2-3 pounds; baking powder, 2 ounces or less.
Merits of Various Cereal Flours and Other Materials Scientifically Considered.— Wheat and rye and barley have been, for ages, the cereals from which European peoples have baked their bread. Whether wheat is the oldest cereal used is not known; they have been dis covered together in the most ancient burial places of man so that barley at one time seemed equally as important as wheat, but it was gradually superseded by the latter. It is still employed when wheat is scarce or expensive, as at present (1918) in the United States, where the food administration requires the employ ment of wheat substitutes to the amount of 25 per cent or more in the baking of wheat bread Or Victory bread in the production of which various substitute flours enter, such as barley flour, rye flour, corn flour, rice flour, potato flour, the relative value of which now becomes more clearly evident through the test of practi cal results. Barley flour has been found to be
less serviceable than the other substitutes. The American barley differs greatly from the European barley in character, as has recently been pointed out by the Wahl Institute of Food Research, Chicago. American barley flour pro duces darker bread; a smaller loaf that is apt to be soggy, that is, insufficiently aerated. Oat meal and flour and resultant bread have much of the characteristics of barley flour and bread. Corn meal and corn flour, rice meal and rice flour in quantities of 25 per cent, if properly processed, will give a white bread of equal quality as whole wheat, and the employment of these substitutes probably will become a permanent feature in the American baking in dustry. Potato flour may be blended with good results with corn meal to the extent of 10 to 20 per cent of the latter.
Some Scientific Principles Underlying peculiar elasticity of wheat and rye flour Boughs, which render them capable of retaining, better than dough from other sources, the gas generated by dough fermenta tion, so that the gas is held uniformly dis tributed in dough and bread, is due to the peculiar nature of the proteins of wheat and rye. In wheat flour these are termed gliadin and glutenin, which somewhat partake of the nature of the white of an egg. These bodies are gradually broken down through the proc essess accompanying yeast fermentation, re sulting gradually in the proper ripening of the dough, which takes from five to six hours, and without which the finished product would be too tough— more or less rubberlike.
Rye flour contains similar bodies to an almost equal degree, and these are broken down so that the dough becomes ripened properly by employing the sour-dough principle. The acidity developed in the sour dough aids ma terially the yeast fermentation processes in bringing the dough to the proper stage of ripen ing. In American barley flour the proteins (hordeins) are quite dissimilar in nature. The ripening process does not develop in the same way as with European barley, which is of the two-rowed mellow type, whereas the American is of the six-rowed, hard, flinty type. Neither corn flour nor rice flour contain proteins of the nature of those of wheat or rye, although the gluten either contains to a considerable ex tent has a somewhat similar chemical composi tion. The bread from corn flour or rice flour alone shows no elasticity. It is too short, while corn or rice flour, as well as potato flour, may be properly used to reduce an all too great elasticity of wheat bread. Water — soft, pure, cool water, such as that which our Great Lakes supply, is best suited for baking. Hard water, such as well water, generally containing car bonate of lime and magnesia, are less suited. These waters neutralize the souring principle, produced in yeast- or sour dough-fermentation, and therefore act detrimental. Animal or vege table fats give bread and other baking products a distinctive flavor, and aid in shortening wheat bread. Salt, that is, table salt, is necessary for seasoning bread, rolls and biscuits, for the same reason that it is required as an addition in the preparation of most of our foods. Slightly too large quantities of salt interfere with proper dough aeration.