The panary fermentation, or the fermenta tion which dough undergoes, is nearly identical with vinous fermentation ; a little alcohol being produced by it. Hence arose a notable project, a few years ago, for saving the spirit produced in bread making; a sum of 20,000/. was spent in establishing a bakery at Chelsea hut it was soon found that the projectors had totally misconceived the chemistry of their subject; while neighbouring bakers, by adver tising 'bread with the gin in it,' contrived to throw the gin-less bread quite out of popular favour.
Under ordinary circumstances, no machi nery is employed in bread making in England. About 20 years ago Mr. Clayton obtained a pa tent for a rotatory kneading machine : in the interior of which knives were placed diagonally ; and other mixing and kneading machines have since been invented; but the hand method remains still almost exclusively in force in this country. Our French neighbours under stand these :things better: they apply more science to th e chemistry of eating and chinking. The mixing and kneading are generally effected by hand : but they are more carefully attended to than in England. There is, ever, a machine-bakery, patented at Paris by Monchot, of which Dumas gives a descrip tion : the lifting of the flour into the troughs, the admission of water, the mixing, the kneading, the baking—. all are effected by the aid cf efficient machinery.
A machine for baking bread by steam was introduced into France about five years ago. It consists principally of two concentric cylin ders, the inner one of which has numerous perforations. The dough is placed in the inner cylinder, and steam is admitted to the space between the two cylinders. Half an hour is said to be sufficient for the heat of the steam to bake the bread ; but it would appear that there ought to be some mode of drying the bread after this process.
An ingenious mode of baking biscuits is de scribed in the `Mechanics Magazine' (No. 081) as having been invented by Mr. Dencale, an American, and practised in New York. A brick oven stands in the middle of the bake house, 12 feet long, 0 feet wide, and 4 feet high. The top has no opening whatever. The front has an opening near the ground, with a metal door, through which the fuel is introduced and made to cover the entire area of the floor of the oven. About a foot above
the furnace door is an opening six or eight inches high and the whole width of the oven; a similar opening exists at the back of the oven. Near each opening is a wooden cylin der; and round both cylinders a wire lattice work is tightly coiled, so as to form an endless cloth stretching horizontally within and across the oven, over the fire. The dough and his'. cults being ranged in a row along the front edge of the wire-cloth, the baker turns a winch hand and winds them into the oven ; this he does row after row, until, by the time the first row has reached the back of the oven, the bis cuits in that row are properly baked. This method presents a good deal of analogy to that described under Biscuit.
In respect to orens,considerable improvements have been introduced within the last few years ; instead of placing fuel in the oven, it is placed on one side, and flues are so arranged as to heat the oven with less waste, more quickly, and with more cleanliness than on the old method.
Of the condition of the bakers much has been said lately which tends to show that there is sad want of improvement ; Dr. Guy's Report on this subject gives a gloomy picture of the effects of night work on the journeymen bakers. Nor is the genuineness of the bread produced quite so undeniable as one might wish. Indeed the public has been a little scared at the long list of objectionables used to adulterate bread—damaged wheat, beans, peas, carbonate of ammonia, potatoes, plaster of Paris, chalk, pipeclay, burnt bones, are all said occasionally to take part in the manufac ture of what ought to be wheaten bread. There is a double mischief in all this: it is a robbery in itself ; and it leads to the honest as well as the dishonest being suspected by those whose suspicions are aroused, but who have neither inclination nor skill to analyse their bread.
The varieties of bread used only in a small degree are numerous. There are bran bread, French soup bread, grain bread, household bread, Iceland moss bread, leavened bread, potato bread, &c.—all of which have pecu liarities either in the ingredients or in the mode of making.