The amount of salt to be added depends
upon individual taste. Some like to set their yeast working in part
potato, part flour. Others use milk instead of water. Some add
shortening. And nearly all women believe that their own bread is the
best.
Yeast is made up of myriads of little plants or fungi, which thrive on
the sugary part of the flour. They convert this into alcohol and
carbonic acid gas. The alcohol is practically all gone before the bread
is brought to the table. The gas raises the bread, assisted by the
expansion of the water in the dough when it is placed in a hot oven.
The yeast consumes a great deal of the nutritive part of the flour. This
may amount to from 5 to 8 per cent. of the food value, and I have read
that sometimes it is as high as 20 per cent. Liebig said that the
fermentation destroyed enough food material daily in Germany to supply
400,000 people with bread. However, yeast bread is very agreeable to the
taste and therefore is probably worth more than the unfermented product.
One objection to yeast bread is that all the yeast is not killed in
baking, and the alcoholic fermentation may start again in the stomach.
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