elle salts of medicine, a mild purgative, and if we could
collected from the bread and weigh or measure it, we would find nearly
as much of it as there was of the baking powder in the first place. If
two teaspoonfuls of baking powder to the quart of flour be used, we have
remaining in the bread made with that amount of flour 165 grains of
crystallized Rochelle salts, or 45 grains more than this to be found in
a Seidlitz powder. It may be sometimes useful to take a dose of salts,
but the daily consumption of such chemical substances in bread can
hardly be considered compatible with the conditions necessary for the
maintenance of health. These chemical substances are unusable by the
system, and must all be removed by the liver and excretory organs, thus
imposing upon them an extra and unnecessary burden. It has also been
determined by scientific experimentation that the chemicals found in
baking powders in bread retard digestion.
These substances are, fortunately, not needed for the production of good
light bread. The purpose of their use is the production of a gas; but
air is a gas much more economical and abundant than carbonic-acid gas,
and which, when introduced into bread and subjected to heat, has the
property of expanding, and in doing, puffing up the bread and making it
light. Bread made light with air is vastly superior to that compounded
with soda or baking powder, in point of healthfulness, and when well
prepared, will equal it in lightness and palatableness. The only
difficulty lies in catching and holding the air until it has
accomplished the desired results. But a thorough understanding of the
necessary conditions and a little practice will soon enable one to
attain sufficient skill in this direction to secure most satisfactory
results.
[Illustration: Gem Irons]
GENERAL DIRECTIONS.--All materials used for making aerated bread
should be of the very best quality. Poor flour will not produce good
bread by this or by any other process. Aerated breads are of two kinds:
those baked while in the form of a batter, and such as are made into a
dough before baking.
[Illustration: Perforated Sheet Iron Pan for Rolls.]
All breads, whether fermented or unfermented, are lighter if baked in
some small form, and this is particularly true of unfermented breads
made light with air. For this reason, breads made into a dough are best
baked in the form of rolls, biscuits, or crackers, and batter breads in
small iron cu
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