I have witness, that five bushels of flour, three ounces of alum, six pounds of salt, one bushel of potatoes boiled into a stiff paste, and three quarts of yeast, with the requisite quantity of water, produce a white, light, and highly palatable bread.
Such are the artifices practised in the preparation of bread,[45] and it must be allowed, on contrasting them with those sophistications practised by manufacturers of other articles of food, that they are comparatively unimportant. However, some medical men have no hesitation in attributing many diseases incidental to children to the use of eating adulterated bread; others again will not admit these allegations: they persuade themselves that the small quantity of alum added to the bread (perhaps upon an average, from eight to ten grains to a quartern loaf,) is absolutely harmless.
Dr. Edmund Davy, Professor of Chemistry, at the Cork Institution, has communicated the following important facts to the public concerning the manufacture of bread.
"The carbonate of magnesia of the shops, when well mixed with flour, in the proportion of from twenty to forty grains to a pound of flour, materially improves it for the purpose of making bread.
"Loaves made with the addition of carbonate of magnesia, rise well in the oven; and after being baked, the bread is light and spongy, has a good taste, and keeps well. In cases when the new flour is of an indifferent quality, from twenty to thirty grains of carbonate of magnesia to a pound of the flour will considerably improve the bread. When the flour is of the worst quality, forty grains to a pound of flour seem necessary to produce the same effect.
"As the improvement in the bread from new flour depends upon the carbonate of magnesia, it is necessary that care should be taken to mix it intimately with the flour, previous to the making of the dough.
"Mr. Davy made a great number of comparative experiments with other substances, mixed in different proportions with new bread flour. The fixed alkalies, both in their pure and carbonated state, when used in small quantity, to a certain extent were found to improve the bread made from new flour; but no substance was so efficacious in this respect as carbonate of magnesia.