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Thank you, Nana, for taking the time to review our show. We're so glad you enjoy it, and also find it so effective at helping you fall asleep. This episode is brought to you by our Patreon supporters and by our Daily Bread. And tonight we'll read a treatise on the art of making good wholesome bread of wheat oats rye barley. By Frederick A. CUM, published in 1821, A. CUM was a German chemist whose most important achievements included advances in the field of gaslighting, efforts to keep processed foods free from dangerous additives, and the promotion of popular chemistry. Following an apprenticeship as an apothecary, he opened his own commercial laboratory enterprise in London.

Let's get cozy. Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now take a few deep breaths. art of making bread. Nothing appears so easy at first sight as to grind grain, to knead the flour with water into dough, and to convert it by baking into porous bread. But, simple as these operations may now appear to us, the art of making loaf bread was by no means one of the earliest among human inventions. 4. essential this species of food may be considered among us as a primary subsistence. It is perfectly certain that men had long existed in a state of civilization before bread was known among them. importance of grain as food might long escape observation, and mankind would naturally derive a more obvious, though less nutritive subsistence, from acorns, berries, and other fruits which were within their reach. According to Greek mythology, they are descended from heaven, a god to teach mankind the use of agriculture. In the early ages of society, according to some historians, men were satisfied with parching their grain for immediate use as food. The next advance appears to have been to pulverize the grain in a mortar or hand mill and to form it by the addition of water or milk into a kind of porridge or to make the bruised grain into dough, which was rendered edible by baking on embers, even after the method of grinding grain into meal and separating the bran by sifting had become known, it was long before the art of fermenting the dough in order to produce bread full of eyes and of a soft consistency was discovered. Like many other operations of primary importance, the origin of the art of making bread is lost in the darkness of ages past. Greeks attribute the art of making bread to the Godpan. Bakers were unknown in Rome till the year of the city 850 or about 200 years before the the Christian era, the Roman Bakers came from Greece with the Macedonian army. Before this, the Romans were sometimes called the Eders of Pap, otherwise known as Mush. At the time of Augustus, there were upwards of 300 baking houses in Rome, almost the whole of which were occupied by Greeks. The bakers enjoyed in ancient Rome great privileges. The public greeneries were entrusted to their care. They formed a corporation or kind of college, from which neither they nor their children were permitted to withdraw. They were exempted from guardianships and public services, which might interfere with their occupation.

They were eligible to become senators, and those who married the daughters of bakers became members of the college. From the establishment of bakers in Rome, the art of making loaf or fermented bread, spread among the ancient Gauls, but its progress in the northern countries of Europe was slow, and in some northern districts, the luxury of eating fermented or loaf bread is at this

day not in general use. Some of the modern Italians consume the greatest part of their bread flour in the state of macaroni and vermicelli, and in other forms of polenta or soft pudding, and even at present, millions of people neither so nor reap, but content themselves with enjoying the spontaneous productions of the earth, bread grain, properly so called, of which loaf bread is chiefly made among cultivated nations, comprehends the seeds of the whole tribe of cereal grains, for they all are are chiefly composed of starch. Those cereals in common use are the following, wheat, barley, and rye. With us, wheat is chiefly employed for the fabrication of bread. It is, in fact, the only grain of which light, porous bread can be made, but rye and barley are also used as bread grain. The farina of the other cereals afford also a nutritive and wholesome bread, though their flower is not so susceptible of fermentation. It cannot be made into the white texture of the wheat and loaf. The bread formed from them is consequently much inferior to that prepared from wheat. The following seeds are chiefly employed to make a species of bread. Oats, maize, rice, and millet. Oats are used in the north of Europe for making a kind of bread called oatmeal cake and particularly by the inhabitants of Scotland. Maze is frequently employed as bread grain in North America. Rice nourishes more human beings than all the other seeds together, used as food, and it is by many considered the most nutritive of all sorts of grain. A very ridiculous prejudice has existed with respect to rice, namely that it is prejudicial to the sight by causing diseases of the eye, but no authority can warrant this assertion. On the contrary, the opinion of the ableist men may be quoted in favor of rice being a very healthy food, and the experience of all Asia and America may be adduced with sufficient weight to have answered this objection. If it had been supported by anything more than vulgar prejudice

unsupported by facts, this grain is peculiarly calculated to diminish the evils of a scanty harvest and inconvenience which must occasionally affect all countries, particularly those which

are very populace. It is the most fitted of all food to be used in relieving general distress in a bad season because it comes from a part of the world where provisions are abundant. It is light, easy of carriage,

keeps well for a long time, and contains a great deal of wholesome food within a small compass. Yes, indeed, it has been ascertained that one part of rice contains as much food and

useful Indeed, it has been ascertained that one part of rice contains as much food and useful nourishment as six of wheat. Next to the cereal grains, the seeds of legumes may be regarded as substitutes for bread grain. Their ripe seeds afford the greatest quantity of food matter. Their meal has a Swedish taste, but they cannot be made into light and porous bread without the addition of a portion of wheat flour. Their meal, however, though it forms but a coarse and indifferent bread, neither very palatable nor very digestible, except by the most robust stomachs, is yet highly nutritive. The legumes employed in the fabrication of bread are peas, beans, kidney beans. Legumes afford a much more agreeable, though not a more nutritive food when their seeds are used green, young and tender, and simply boiled, then when fully ripened and their flower baked. The potato is a substance largely employed as a substitute for bread. It's nutritious qualities are fully ascertained by the experience of all Europe. It makes a considerable portion of the food of the poor, and in Ireland, in particular, millions of people exist. Who, from sufficient evidence, we are pretty certain live for years together almost wholly on this root and water, without any other seasoning than a little salt. It contains much starch, and when mixed with wheat flour, may be formed into good and palatable bread. Other substances, besides the grains before mentioned, are in different parts of the world substituted for bread. These are the following. The Breadfruit the bread fruit tree affords the inhabitants of the South Pacific Ocean, a substance resembling bread. They only climb the tree to gather the fruit, which is of a round shape. From 5 to 6 inches in diameter. It grows on bows like apples, and when quite ripe is of a yellowish color. The breadfruit has a tough, reticulated rind. There is neither seed nor stone in the inside of it. The edible part, which lies between the skin and the core, is as white as snow, and of the consistence of new bread. The fruit is roasted on embers, or baked in an oven, which scorches the rind and turns it black. This is rast off, and there remains a thin white crust, while the inside is soft and white, like crumbs of fine loaf bread. It is eaten new, for if it is kept longer than 24 hours, it becomes harsh and unpalatable. It is also boiled by which means the interior is rendered white like a boiled potato. They make three dishes of it by putting either water or the milk of the coconut to it, then beating it into a paste with a stone pestle.

And afterwards mixing it with banana paste which has been suffered to become sour. The breadfruit remains in season eight months in the year, during which time the natives eat no other sort of food of the bread kind, and the deficiency of the other four months of the year is made up chiefly with coconuts, bananas, plantains, bread nuts, and other starchy fruits. Kassava bread. In the Caribbean islands, they make a bread of a very poisonous root rendered wholesome by the extraction of its acrid juice, which the Indians use for poisoning their arrows. A teaspoon full of the juice is sufficient to poison a man. The root of the maniote, after being crashed, scraped clean and graded in a tub, is enclosed in a sack of rushes, a very loose texture, which is suspended upon a stick placed upon two wooden forks. To the bottom of this sack, a heavy vessel is suspended, which by by drawing the sack, presses the grated root and receives the juice that flows out of it. When the starch is well exhausted of its juice, it is exposed to smoke in order to dry it. and when well dried, it is passed through a sieve. In this state, it is termed cassava. It is baked into cakes by spreading it on hot plates of iron or earth, turning it on both sides in order to give it a good reddish color. Tapioca, the article of commerce called tapioca, is the finest part of the starchy pith of the cassava. It is separately collected and formed into small tears by straining the mass while still moist to form it into small irregular lumps.

Plantain bread. The plantain tree, which is a native of the east indies and other parts of the asiatic continent, furnishes the inhabitants with a species of bread. The fruit of the plantain entry is about a foot long and from an inch and a half to two inches in diameter. It is at first green, but when ripe of a pale yellow, it has a tough skin and within is a soft pulp of a sweet flavor. The fruit is generally cut before it is ripe. The green skin is peeled off, and the heart is roasted in a clear coal fire for a few minutes and frequently turned. It is then scraped and served up as bread. This tree is cultivated on extensive scale in Jamaica. Without this fruit, the islands would be scarcely inhabitable, as no species of provisions could supply its place. Banana bread. The fruit of the banana tree differs from the proceeding, being shorter, straighter, and rounder. It is about 4 or 5 inches long of the shape of a cucumber and of a highly grateful flavor. Bananas grow in bunches that weigh 12 pounds and upwards. This fruit yields a softer pulp than the plantain tree and of a more luscious taste. It is never eaten green, but when ripe is a very pleasant food, either raw or fried in slices like fritters. It is relished by all ranks of people in the West Indies. When the natives of the West Indies undertake a voyage, they take the ripe fruit of the banana and make provisions of the paste, and having squeezed it through a sieve, form the mass into loaves, which are dried in the sun, or baked on hot ashes, after being previously wrapped up in leaves. Bread of dried fish. The lap lers who have no grain of their own make a kind of bread of the inner soft bark of a pine tree, either mixed with the coarsest barley meal or with dried fish beaten into powder. The bark is collected when the sap is rising. It is afterwards dried in the sun or over a slow fire. The poor people grind the chaff and even some of the straw along with the barley. Another kind of bread is made of dried fish and the root of the water dragon. The root is taken up in the spring before the leaves shoot out. It is dried, pounded, and boiled till it becomes thick. And after standing three or four days to lose its bitterness, it is mixed with the powder of dried fish and the inner bark of the pine tree and then made into a stiff paste and baked over embers. Bread made of moss. species of the tribe of Likcan contain a considerable portion of starch, as in reindeer moss which affords food to the stags and other fallow cattle of the north of Europe. the Icelanders formed the lycan into bread, which is found to be extremely nutritious. The moss is collected in the summer, and when dry, ground into powder, of which bread and gruel are made, it is sometimes also put whole into broth, or is boiled in way, till it be converted into a jelly. In general, it is either previously steeped for some hours in warm water, or the water of the first boiling is rejected in order to remove a part of the bitter extractive matter, which, if left, produces a disagreeable taste and is apt to prove purgative, bread made of earth. The strangest substitute for bread that has ever been employed is a sort of white earth. The earth is dug out of a pit where salt-peater has formed and been worked.

When exposed to the rays of the sun, it splits and cracks. And small globules issue from it like meal, which for ments when mixed with flour. On this earth baked into bread, many persons have subsisted a considerable time. A similar earth is met with in Catalonia. The roe is also who ply the river Mississippi frequently drink large quantities of muddy water, which cannot fail to leave in the stomach a considerable quantity of earth. it cannot be doubted that a large quantity of earthy substances taken into the stomach would prove deleterious to health. Unleavened Bread prepared by baking from the meal of starchy seeds

needed with water into a dough and baked

is divided into three sorts, namely

1. Unleavened Bread

2. Leavened bread. 3. Bread made with yeast. Unleavened bread contains all the component parts of the flour, but little altered. The meal is simply mixed with water and baked into cakes. It is heavy, dry, friable and not porous. The oatmeal bread of Scotland is unleavened bread. It's also sea biscuit and all other kinds of biscuit. In Roman Catholic countries it is still used and prepared with the finest wheat flour, moistened with water and pressed between two plates, graven like wafer molds, being first dropped with wax to prevent the paste from sticking. And when dry, it is used. Unleavened bread is hardly less nutritious than loaf or fermented bread. But it is generally speaking neither so wholesome nor so digestible to make oatmeal cakes. To a pack of oatmeal add a few tablespoons of salt. Knead the mixture into a stiff paste with warm water. Roll it out into thin cakes and bake it in an oven or on em. In some cottages oatmeal bread undergoes a partial fermentation whereby it is rendered lighter, but the generality of the people in the more humble walks of life where oatmeal bread is eaten merely soft in their oatmeal with water and having added to it a little salt bake it into cakes. Two strangers, oatmeal bread, has a dry, unpleasant taste. But the cottages of Scotland, in particular, prefer it to weak bread. you