Читать книгу The Art of Making Good Wholesome Bread of Wheat, Oats, Rye, Barley and Other Farinaceous Grains - Friedrich Christian Accum - Страница 6

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Properly so called, of which loaf-bread is chiefly made among cultivated nations, comprehends the seeds of the whole tribe of (cerealia), or gramineous plants; for they all contain a farinaceous substance, of a similar nature, and chiefly composed of starch. Those of the cerealia in common use are the following:

Wheat	Triticum hybernum.
Barley	Hordeum vulgare.
Rye	Secale cereale.

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-corn. The farina of the other cerealia afford also a nutritive and wholesome bread; though their flour is not so susceptible of the panary fermentation, it cannot be made into the white texture of the wheaten 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	Avena Sativa.
Maize	Zea Mays.
Rice	Oriza Sativa.
Millet	Panicum milliaceum.

Oats are used in the north of Europe for making a kind of bread, called oatmeal-cake, and particularly by the inhabitants of Scotland. Maize is frequently employed as bread-corn 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 ablest men (Cullen’s Mat. Med. v. i. p. 229) may be quoted in favour 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 any thing more than vulgar prejudice, unsupported by facts. This grain is peculiarly calculated to diminish the evils of a scanty harvest, an inconvenience which must occasionally affect all countries, particularly those which are very populous. It is the most fitted of all food to be of use in relieving general distress in a bad season^[2], because it comes from a part of the world where provisions are cheap and 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. Indeed, it has been ascertained that one part of rice contains as much food and useful nourishment as six of wheat.

2.Reports of the Society for bettering the Condition of the Poor, Vol. I. p. 137.

Next to the cerealia, the seeds of leguminous plants may be regarded as substitutes for bread corn. Their ripe seeds afford the greatest quantity of alimentary matter. Their meal has a sweetish taste, but they cannot be made into light and porous bread, without the addition of a portion of wheaten 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.

It is remarked by Dr. Cullen, that “on certain farms of this country, upon which the leguminous seeds are produced in great abundance, the labouring servants are much fed upon that kind of grain; but if such servants are removed to a farm upon which the leguminous seeds are not in such plenty, and therefore they are fed with the cerealia, they soon find a decay of strength; and it is common for servants, in making such removals, to insist on their being provided daily, or weekly, with a certain quantity of the leguminous meal.” We are not, however, to conclude from this observation, that pease-meal bread, is really more nutritive than wheaten bread, or than the meal of the other cerealia. We are rather disposed to regard it as an example of the effect of habit.

The leguminous seeds employed in the fabrication of bread, are

Pease	Pisum Sativum.
Beans	Vicia faba.
Kidney Beans	Phaseolus vulgaris.

The whole of this tribe afford a much more agreeable, though not a more nutritive aliment, when their seeds are used green, young, and tender, and simply boiled, than when fully ripened, and their flour baked.

It is remarked, that all the substances of which bread is made, as well as the substitutes for it, when chemically considered, are chiefly composed of one and the same identical material; namely, the farinaceous matter of the seeds, roots, fruits, or other products of vegetables, of different climates and soils; and that starch, or the amylaceous fecula, forms the most valuable part of all the materials used for making bread, and its substitutes.

This substance forms by far the most abundant, the most nourishing, and the most easy to be procured aliment, obtainable from the vegetable kingdom.

“Whilst immense tribes of creatures devour the amylaceous fecula in the grain, as nature produces it, man knows how to give it different forms, from the most simple boiling to the most complicated delicacies of the arts of the confectioner and pastry-cook.

“It is singular that man should waste so valuable a substance for the purpose of hair-powder, a kind of custom perhaps ridiculous, in which modern nations imitate, without being aware of it, those people whom they term barbarous, and by which custom they lavish away a portion of the subsistence of a great number of families.”

This nutritive aliment, we find, exists in various combinations, in the roots, seeds, in the stems, and fruits of plants. Many roots abounding in the amylaceous fecula, yields a palatable and highly nutritious aliment.

Hence the potatoe is a substance largely employed as a substitute for bread. Its 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 amylaceous fecula, and when mixed with wheaten 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: