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J Baking An Ancient Craft
By T. T. F.
BREAD!
The commonplace of every-day
life, coeval with the pyramids, fel
low with wars aud dynasties in the
_ history of the world, older than the
wildest tradition, honored in Holy Writ, bread
today disputes with the political activities
and the European conflict for first page posi
tion in the newspapers of the land.
Why this reawakened interest in bread?
Why are so many questions concerning it,
supposed to be answered for good and all,
and so many other questions, never before
propounded, being brought to tlie front?
There are two reasons, both very simple.
In the first place practically everyone in
America eats bread and therefore is inter
ested, and in the second place after a period
of an average life time at a stationary price,
that price suddenly baa changed.
Man has been laying bricks since before
the days when the Pharaohs builded them
selves monuments by the banks of the Nile,
but it remained for Frank B. Gilbreth, an
efficiency engineer of Providence, to find
that for all these centuries much of the en
ergy and time had been wasted. So the pres
ent agitation about bread lias revealed facts
never before suspected. Big minds in all
lines have applied themselves to the subject.
What some of them have to say is set forth
here In a general survey of the bread prob
lem from all angles.
In thinking of bread the dweller in the
city considers at once the baker, while in a
large measure the rural inhabitant considers
the housewife. Obviously the baker is tho
person most intimately interested in the
■whole bread proposition. In the last 25
years the baking Industry has undergone
radical changes. S. F. McDonald, of Mem
phis, president of the National Association
of Master Bakers, says more talent is re
quired to be a successful baker than to be a
successful banker or a successful doctor.
Mr. McDonald defends this view by saying
that the average banker has no professional
training. He has grown up in his business,
•nd his trade is the trade of dollars and
cents, of debits and credits, and there is not
what fairly might be called a technical train
ing.
The physician must give years of time and
study to preparing himself for his calling,
OUR WONDER WORM)..
The part, performed by worms in
rendering the earth fertile is not gen
erally understood. Darwin estimated
that worms, by swallowing earth for
the sake of the vegetable matter it
contains, and afterwards expelling it.
Bringing Up Father # # Copvritrht, 1916, International News Service §
I 'V I 1 H°K,N°f,o% £ 1 • i 'V E 1 I >OO OOKT j i WELL-YOO I (HE C^.N'
ON YOU -JERRY IT ■ OF MONEY V T W CALL CWW WLE I'M FOOUN ™E HOO OP THE LAOOEIR
L___ 1., J ' V V- -7 "!fZJ J JOB THE HOO EAVT L the OQ Ti . FILLED WITH MORTAR
- <-*> I— J OUT N MOT - I
_ '
WEDNESDAY EVENING,
but aside from these he seldom has any
business acumen.
'I he baker, on the other hand, according to
Mr. McDonald, must have a high degree of
technical training, including chemistry and
physics, coupled with years of apprentice
ship in the shop, and to this he must add a
proportionate degree of skill in the manag
ing of his business. He has a big investment
at stake and he must not only know how to
sell, but when and where to buy, what prices
are right, and he must have executive ability
into the bargain, as the baking industry
today is conducted on a large scale. Like
all other big business men, bakers have in
stalled cost accounting systems, so that the
leaders in the industry saw the approaching
necessity for price readjustment and aat
themselves to work to prepare for it.
As a result of their analysis of the situa
tion, the campaign In favor of ten-cent
loaves, which has been going oil for the last
several weeks, was inaugurated. This is be
cause in baking approximately 46 per cent
of all costs are in the nature of overhead
charges and these are proportionately less
in the larger loaf than in the small one.
The immediate cause for a readjustment
in bread prices is the woeful insufficiency
of the 1916 wheat crop coupled with the ex
traordinary export demanded for that cereal
growing out of the war in Europe. Accord
ing to government authorities tills year's
acreage was only 80 per cent of that of 1915,
and this acreage has yielded as low as 50
per cent or the crop iu a great deal of the
United States wheat lands.
Bad Winter and Dry Summer, Then Rust.
Many things combine to reduce the yield,
among them a bad winter and a dry summer,
but most damaging of all was the black rust,
which made its appearance fn the Dakota.
Minnesota and Montana wheat fields. Black
rust to a great many people is only a name,
but to the farmer who has staked his all in a
crop of wheat it is a very real and very ugy
evil. Prof. W. G. Stover, of the Ohio State
University, one of the grain experts of the
Middle West, says rust is a fungus growth
of very simple structure and parasitical
habit. It attacks the leaves and stems most
ly. At first there are numerous postules or
reddish brown spores. letter black and
brownish spore masses are formed on the
same parts and these give the name black
rust to the disease.
In many wheat growing sections black
rust is by far the most serious disease of
the wheat. The disease is spread from plant
to plant and from farm to farm by means of
these spores, which *re of the same use to
the rust fungus as seed is to other plants.
Rust annually causes loss to wheat in the
United States ranging from $15,000,000 to
$60,000,000.
Another cause that is added to the high
cost of wheat, according to other experts,
bring to the surface as much as 10
tons of earth per annum on an acre.
Worms are great promoters of vege
tation by boring. perforating and
loosening the soil, and rendering it
pervious to rains and the filters of
plants by drawing straws and stalks
is the failure of American farmers to prop
erly fertilize their fields. 0. E. Thome, head
of the Ohio Experiment Station at Wooster,
Ohio, in an official bulletin, says: "Less la
bor with more seed, more manure and more
fertilizer would enable Ohio farmers to grow
as much wheat on 1,600,000 acres as they are
now growing on 2,000,000 acres."
Each official monthly report of the De
partment of Agriculture since the first of
.lune has decreased the estimate of the
United States wheat yield until it is now
approximately 600,000,000 bushels and more
than 400,000,000 under the 1915 yield. As
the annual consumption is very close to 600,-
000,000 bushels, this would mean that there
should not bo a single bushel exported If
prlpes were to remain at the 1915 level.
But already millions of bushels have been
exported and millions of other bushels have
been booked for export, so that the price of
wheat, and as a consequence the price of
flour, has continued to soar until they are
now at a level unknown since the days of
the Civil War.
No Good to Bake at Home.
This has resulted in some well intended,
but misdirected, effort to induce tte house
wife to bake her own bread. It * t a mis
taken idea that such a change might result
in economy to the family. Official Investi
gation along this line comes far from bear
ing out this supposition. A miller who ap
pealed recently to Miss Anne MacGregor
Payne, director of the Home Economics De
partment of one of the leading papers in
Ohio, was given the benefit of exhaustive
research and experimentation which show
that only by turning out an inferior loaf
could the housewife do as wjell as by buying
baker's bread, while if she attempted to pro
duce a loaf as good as the best baker's bread
it would cost iier more to make It at home
than to buy it.
On a basis of New York prices, Miss
Payne found that in buying the bread baked
from a barrel of flour, the housewife was
paying only 27 cents for the labor involved,
if she bought 10-cent loaves and 79 cents if
she bought 5-cent loaves. Allowing three
fourths of an hour for each four loaf batch,
Miss Payne found that the 74 bakings in a
barrel of flour would require 62 hours of
time and that this labor at a minimum rate
would have a market value of $11.40.
Miss Payne's deductions are further sub
stantiated by the Journal of Home Econom
ics of July Issue, which made a survey oT
the same subject. Taking up the claim that
the saving of money is not necessarily the
only point to be considered in comparing
domestic baked and commercially baked
bread, Miss Payne says:
"It is necessary to know and understand
the modern bakery methods and machinery
as compared with the old basement type of
of leaves and twigs into it, and, most
of all, by throwing up such infinite
numbers of lumps of earth called
wormcasts, which form a tine manure
for grain and grass. The earth with
out worms would soon become cold,
hard, void of fermentation and con
HARRISBURQ TELEGRAPH
sequentiy sterile. This has occurred l
in many cases where the worms have j
tieen either accidentally or intention- |
ally destroyed, and the fertility of J
the soil thus lost has only been re-1
I stored when the worms had again!
bakery. And in the further discussion 1 am
speaking of the large bakery which is able
to give the most of the best broad for the
least money became of quantities of ma
terial handled, and who is reliable and de
pendable and honest, and many such exist.
I am taking it for granted that the house
keeper who will consider the question at all
will be ambitious enough to Bee that her
bread is coming from a clean, reliable ba
kery. In the old, small bakery the baker
was forced to use "red dog" flour and in
ferior materials in order to come out with a
profit. The modern bakery sends the flour
which is the best to the top of the building
and there it is rebolted and sifted through
fine silk cloth. This the baker has another
purpose in doing, but it results in the flour
being cleaner for his bread than the house
keeper's is. After this it is not touched by
the hand until you unwrap it at your home.
"Second: the baker can mix his flour to
make a perfect texture, color and flavor,
which depend on the amount of gluten and
its quality. The housekeeper can not give
the time to the testing and grain grading
that is necessary to perfectly blend the
flours, to get the proper ratio of ingredients.
"Third: In the rising bread there are three
acids which develop and have a marked ef
fect on the fermentation, lactic, acetic and
butyric acids. The lactic acid Is present in
the largest quantities and should develop the
most rapidly, if the dough reaches too high
a temperature, the acetic acid develops too
rapidly and causes an over percentage of
butyric acid which results usually in sour
bread. At too low a temperature, lactic
acid increases too rapidly with harmful re
sults. The baker ferments his bread in au
tomatically controlled temperatures and the
housekeeper even of years' experience can
not hope to compete with him on this plane.
Things Housekeeper Is Unable to Control.
"Fourth: the amount and strength of the
fermentation plays a part in the flavor of
the bread, the appearance and food value.
The baker kneads and beats his dough me
chanically usually for at least thirty min
utes. This dissolves or softens the gluten.
The housekeeper is dependent on the yeast
fermentation for this and must continue the
fermentation longer than the baker, thereby
losing a larger amount of the sugar and car
bo-hydrate in the form of alcohol and car
bonic acid gas. The amount of salt has
much to do with the fermentation, acting as
a check. The baker uses salt In quantity for
flavor and uses a stronger yeast. This the
housekeeper can not control, either. The
baker considers that the most important con
trol of flavor is the amount of salt used and
the strength of th® yeast
i collected and resumed their fertiliz-
I in work-
Star photography is one of the
| most tedious operations known. In
! some cases the exposure of the plate
DECEMBER 27, 1916.
"In summing up the situation, the house
keeper who manages her house in the most
successful and efficient way, when she finds
that she can free herself from a large num
ber of hours of manual labor by putting the
work into the hands of others equally and
eveii better prepared to do It, she will do
so at once and use that time for work which
can not be trusted to others. She will give
It to her family or to ll.ose who need her
most. For the "housekeeper who must count
every penny, regardless of the amount of
labor involved, I think 6he, too, will find
that her time may be spent In other ways
that will yield her a greater saving of money.
That 52 hours spent in sewing or perhaps
out of doors will yield her a far greater
return than the 79 cents which is the great
est difference she will get and even in mak
ing that estimate there has no allowance
been made for any spoiling by failure in any
way and taking it for granted that all the
bread made at home from a barrel of flour
Is of equally good quality. The baker does
not put his failures on the market, you only
pay him for his best."
What Distinguished State Official Says.
Another authority equally distinguished so
far as the baking Industry is concerned, is
I)r. H. E. Barnard, State Food and Drug
Commissioner of Indiana, and one of the
best known authorities on food values in the
United States. In a recent article written
for the New York Evening Mail, he sayß:
"Home-made bread can not compete with
the bakers' product. Ten years ago it was
a courageous baker who would invite the
public to his shop. Today the baker who
does not throw the doors open to his criti
cal customers is out of date and he can not
get credit at the bank. I do not want to
persuade the housewife to stop baking
bread, but after she has visited a modern
bakeshop I think she will."
Dr. Barnard has also done a little investi
gating on the question of a ten cent loaf and
in another Issue of the same publication
says:
"Ten cent bread is perfectly logical and
its use will profit both the public and the
baker. The public will get more than twice
as much bread for a dime as it will for a
nickel. It will have better eating and keep
ing qualities and there will be but two heels
instead of four. Perhaps you don't waste the
heels, but most people do.
"The grocer doubles his profit with one
handling. The baker saves on fuel, labor,
wrapping expenses, delivery costs and ad
vertising. Ten cent bread is an economical
proposition to everyone. The buying habit
Is an economical proposition to everyone.
The buying habit of the cuatomar may, per
must last for several hours. During
all this limp both the plate and tele
scope must lie moved so that the
Image of the star will he stationary
on the plate. The exposure for a
haps, be slow to change, but the ten cent
loaf is bound to come."
Last year before bread prices had begun
to advance In so many lines of foodstuffs
the University of Illinois conducted a series
of experiments to establish among other
things the relative food value of bread. As
a result of this Investigation it was shown
that whatever the price of a loaf might be,
so long as other foods advanced somewhere
near proportion, bread will be almost twice
as valuable for the same cost as any other
food obtainable.
In this bulletin, issued by Isabel Bevier,
head of the department, it is stated:
"The peculiar value of wheat bread lies
In the fact that it is one of the cheapest
sources of protein. Again this form of pro*
tein known as gluten which occurs in wheat
flour enhances the value of the flour becauso
the gluten has the property of expanding and
serving as a framework for the retention of
air or carbon-dioxide. Because this quality
is lacking in the protein of corn and oats,
neither of these grains la extensively used
for bread. The value of a flour, then, for
bread depends upon the quantity and quality
of its gluten and upon its strength, and this
latter quality is usually judged by its capac
ity to absorb water. Large bakeries conduct
experiments constantly to find just the blend
of flour that will absorb the greatest amount
of water, or, in other words, yield the great
est amount of bread, or take and retain
water.
Bread Cheapest Food at AlmoGt Any Price.
"It ha 9 been understood for a long time
that the term cheap and dear as applied to
foods mean not only the amount of money
expended, but rather the amount o! nutritive
materials secured, for a given S'im or to put
it in another way, the amount of building
material —protein and energy—calories, that
can be secured. The following table shows
how favorably bread compares with other
food stuffs in these two points.
Tm CMti worth
will coataia
FOOD DDirc Tn rfoli Faal
MATERIALS PRICE will bur Tr: Vain.
tain af
Calarias
Wheat bread.so.os lb. 32.0 oz. 2.9 oz. 2,400
Cheese 22 7.3 1.9 888
Beef, average .20 8.0 1.2 467
Porterhouse
steak 25 6.4 1.3 444
Dried beef.., .25 6.4 .1 315
Eggs .24 10.0 1.3 198
Milk 09 qt. 38.3 1.2 736
Potatoes 60 bu. 160.0 none 2,950
Apples 015 lb. 106.7 none 1,270
"It will be seen that, at the prices quoted
above, ten cents expended in bread will se
cure more than twice the protein obtained
from beef, and almost three times the en
ergy; also that ten cents invested in bread
at flve cents per pound, compared with eggs
at twenty-four cents per dozen, will yield
more than twice as much protein and twelr*
times the energy."
star of the sixteenth magnitude is two
hours, and only the Image of one at
a time can be secured, unless thosa
adjoining happen to be of the sama
size.
5