CURRENT NOTES
While the scientists are engaged in their interesting dispute over the question as to whether yeast as used in bread-making is composed of animals or vegetables,—many of the most advanced, as Liebig, Pasteur, Huxley, and Tyndall, claiming to have discovered that its tiny cells are formed of animalcules, and not of vegetable fungi as has heretofore been supposed,—it is well to inquire if we cannot with wisdom discard its use altogether and relieve ourselves from doubt, if not from danger. It is not a pleasant suspicion that with every mouthful of our daily bread we are munching the remains of a million, more or of insects.
There are many reasons given why yeast should be altogether discarded in the production of food. It is hardly disputed at this day that there are qualities in the yeast itself which are detrimental to the digestive organs. In addition to this, the care required in manipulation, the difficulty in arresting fermentation at the right stage so that the bread while fully light shall not be sour, the knowledge or experience necessary to apply the varying qualities of different brands of flour and yeast to produce similar results, are all so great that nine times out of ten the yeast-made bread comes out of the oven either unpalatable or unwholesome. There is also the peculiarly oppressive and injurious effect upon the digestive organs produced by such bread when eaten warm, or in its freshest and best condition; while the continuance in the stomach of the fermentative action from the debris of the yeast that invariably remain in the bread, causing acidity of the stomach, heartburn, flatulence, and those other unpleasant sensations bordering upon dyspepsia, and the destruction of a large percentage of the most valuable and nutritive parts of the flour by the fermentation required to produce the carbonic acid gas for its own leavening, are still more serious objections.
Yeast, as it is well known, does not of itself raise the bread more than the match which is applied to the fuel gives the heat by which the loaf is baked. As the heat from the fire is the product of the destruction of the fuel, so the carbonic acid gas which raises the loaf of bread made with yeast is the product of the destruction of the flour from which the loaf is made. The yeast simply incites the elements of the flour to an action that is destructive and unnatural. During the destruction or putrefaction of these elements of the flour the carbonic acid gas which lightens the bread is given off, at the sacrifice, however, of its best elements and at least ten per cent. of the flour itself.
If, therefore, the bread can be raised in a mechanical way and made equally light without the use of yeast, and if this process also preserves all the constituents of the flour without chemical change or impairment, avoids the destruction which inevitably attends the fermentative process, and produces not only a greater proportion of bread but an article more wholly and certainly palatable and wholesome, and with the outlay of much Less labor, no prejudices or old-time customs should be permitted to stand in the way of its general adoption.
It has been demonstrated by the government chemists, as well as by practical experience in baking, that pure carbonic acid gas is produced in the dough,
