Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 8/The impurities of the loaf
THE IMPURITIES OF THE LOAF.
Any one who travels along the bye-streets of London comes now and then across what is called a “cutting baker’s shop.” If he be a family man, and knows the current price of the four-pound loaf, he is surprised to find the “cottage” and “tin” that he sees marked up in the shop-window, sold at a penny or twopence lower than he is in the habit of paying at home. If he goes in and examines the staff of life, he is struck with its whiteness and apparent fineness. At first sight it would seem that the poor man got a better article for less money than the rich and well-to-do classes; but a little inquiry into the method by which these cutting bakers “make things pleasant” soon dissipates this seeming anomaly. The size of the loaf, for instance, is by no means commensurate with the amount of nutriment it contains, for the simple reason that it may be made with more or less water. The cheap baker, for the sake of plumping up his loaf to the biggest size, mixes his dough very thin, and by only three parts baking it, makes the steam swell it enormously. Consequently the poor man who buys new bread pays, say sevenpence or sevenpence halfpenny a pound, for so much steam. These puffy loaves again are generally made with damaged flour, which will not by itself make a white loaf; to correct this, alum is added, which so whitens the bread that it looks even fairer than that made from the best wheat; indeed, great whiteness in the household loaf must always be looked upon with suspicion. This process of mixing the thin dough, and then imperfectly baking the loaf, not only takes in the poor man, but enables the baker to make more loaves out of a sack of flour. The conscientious baker makes, on an average, ninety loaves out of a sack; the under seller, however, manages to turn out from ninety-four to ninety-six. If he makes ten sacks a week (a low average), he thus fraudulently obtains some fifty four-pound loaves over and above the respectable baker. This will account for the fair appearance of the bread in the windows of the “cutting baker,” and also for the sensation announcements posted in their windows: “Down again,” “Bread a penny cheaper,” which in many cases may be read “more water in it.” The process of adulteration by means of alum is not only a fraud upon the purchaser, but also positively injurious to all delicate adults and young children; indeed it is the sole cause of nearly half the troubles of babies fed upon bread and milk, since the astringent nature of the alum entirely deranges the digestion of their delicate stomachs. Further, as a rule, the cheaper the bread, the more of this deleterious substance is to be found in it.
Yet now and then it is to be discovered in the bread of the most respectable bakers. When Dr. Hassall’s analysis of bread appeared in the “Lancet,” some of the most respectable men in the trade were surprised to find that he had detected alum in their loaves. Knowing they were innocent of putting it in during the process of baking, it occurred to some of them to have the flour analysed; and lo, the delinquent turned out to be the miller, a well-abused individual from the earliest ages.
But even these impurities are found to form only a small part of the charges laid at the door of the master baker. The journeyman has for years groaned under a system of extreme labour, calculated to break down the strongest constitution. As a general rule he labours, with slight intermissions of sleep, from eighteen to twenty hours a day, but on Fridays he often works for a day and a night together. This slavery, combined with the unwholesome nature of the occupation, which renders the baker’s trade one of the most unhealthy trades in existence, led some short time since to the men’s grievances being laid before Parliament, and to the appointment of a commission: to inquire into the condition of journeymen bakers and bakehouses generally. The report of the commissioner, Mr. Tremenheere, has been laid before Parliament, and now, in the form of a blue book, has given us such a sickening as we never experienced in crossing the Channel in the roughest weather.
The manufacture of bread is carried on, as most of us know, in the cellars and kitchens of our London houses. What goes on in these confined spaces is not very pleasant to tell; but as the remedy lies in our own hands, it would be folly to allow a false delicacy to interfere with a thorough reformation of the whole method of bread-making as at present practised.
In the report now before us, Mr. Tremenheere gives us the result of the inspection of upwards of fifty bakehouses, and it certainly is not calculated to make us relish our breakfast. It is not enticing, for instance, to know that—paraphrasing a well-known expression—we eat our bread “in the sweat of the maker’s brow,” and the disgusting fact is not one of rare occurrence either, but seems to be inseparable from the present mode of making bread by hand. The process of “making the dough,” as it is termed, occupies generally from half an hour to three-quarters of an hour; it is carried on in these underground kitchens as before mentioned, and in an atmosphere ranging from 76 to 90°, but more generally nearer the higher than the lower end of the scale. The process of “making the dough” is carried on by the journeyman baker in this wise. The flour and water are placed in a long deep trough, over which the man has to bend his body, whilst he kneads and turns over the heavy mass—a most laborious occupation—which, continued for the length of time it is, without intermission, in the hot bakehouse, of course suffuses the baker with a profuse perspiration, which drips from his face and arms, and becomes incorporated in the dough.
Mr. Tremenheere states that even in a bakehouse of comparatively low temperature, he has seen this perspiration dropping into our daily bread. And this is not all: the foreman who “sets” the ferment does it with bare arms, and the bakers, after they have done kneading, wash their arms in water, which water the master in some cases compels them to mix with the next dough they mix. Why such a purely mechanical operation as dough-mixing should be carried on by bare arms and hands is a puzzle to us, and certainly says little for the invention of the age, or rather for that of past ages; but we are happy to say that mechanical aid is at last called in, and it will remain with the public themselves to enforce its adoption, as we shall presently show.
But these exudations of the human body are by no means all the impurities the dough contracts whilst in the process of being made into bread. After speaking of the heavy festoons of cobwebs which hang from the roofs of many bakehouses, and which become detached by a heavy blow on the floor above, and fall into the mixing trough, the commissioner goes on to say, “Animals, such as beetles, ants, and cockroaches, in considerable numbers crawled in and out of and upon the troughs where the bread was made, and upon the adjoining walls . . . The smells from the drains were very offensive, the draught of the oven continually drawing the effluvia through the bakehouse.”
On this point Dr. Ure says, “If we reflect that bread, like all porous substances, readily absorbs the air that surrounds it, and that even under the best conditions it should never, on that account, be kept in confined places, what must be the state of bread manufactured in the manner common in London?”
What indeed! This paragraph was written by Dr. Ure many years ago, but still we have gone on eating our “peck of dirt” with a most praiseworthy perseverance, and in all probability should continue to do so but for this report, and the fact that almost simultaneously with its appearance, mechanical science has stepped in to remedy the evils it makes us acquainted with. It is a fact that in most public charities and establishments, such as workhouses, blind asylums, and orphan schools in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, the inmates are supplied with machine-made bread, quite free from the disgusting impurities with the details of which, we fear, we have sickened our reader, while at the same time the most delicate and fastidious members of the community are still depending upon the bakers’ bare arms for the bread they daily eat. Mr. Stevens has now had for some time a very effective machine for the making of bread, by which the whole operation is performed without the aid of the hand at all. This is a very useful apparatus, and is made to suit the requirements of both large and small bakers, and even private persons who love home-made bread. This machine, however, is calculated to make fermented bread only—food which strong stomachs can manage well enough, but which those suffering from dyspepsia cannot so conveniently digest.
The public are now pretty familiar with the aërated bread, the invention of Dr. Dauglish. This bread is also made by machine, but it is not raised by the ferment of yeast, but by the introduction of carbonic acid gas into the dough whilst being mixed in an exhausted receiver. The carbonic acid gas in this manner becomes thoroughly incorporated with the elements of the bread, and as it issues from the machine the gas gives it that highly vesicular appearance on which its extreme lightness depends. Flour, salt, and water are thus the only ingredients to be found in the aerated bread. But the purity of the loaf made by this process is not its only recommendation to weak stomachs. The flour from which it is made is prepared by an American process, which removes the outer coat of the grain—a silicious matter wholly indigestible—without injuring or removing the internal coat, which is the most nutritious part of the grain. By the ordinary method of grinding this coat disappears with the bran, and thus at least twenty per cent. of the value of the wheat grain is lost. The flour, thus rich in what is termed “cerealine,” by the ordinary process of bread-making, however, turns out a rather brownish loaf, to which the public, as a rule, object, as it is supposed to exert certain laxative qualities, after the manner of the well-known brown bread. Now, although this is an error (the peculiar properties of the brown bread depending upon the silicious coat which is retained in it, whilst it is rejected from this new preparation), yet the public cannot be convinced, and the invaluable process of unbranning wheat would have been rejected but for the simultaneous invention of the aërating machine which Dr. Dauglish has brought before the public. The aërated loaf made from this exceedingly rich flour having no fermenting process to go through turns out a beautifully white bread, which is certainly the pleasantest, whilst it is the most nutritive of all kinds of food made from the wheat grain. Some time since, the aërated bread was all made at the extensive steam bakery of Messrs. Peek, Frean and Co., at Dockhead, Bermondsey. The distance from the west-end consumers of the new bakery made the difficulty and cost of distribution so great, that it was necessary to come to some other arrangement. Consequently, Dr. Dauglish, instead of concentrating his manufacture in one place, determined to set up separate bakeries in different centres of the town. The first bakery of this description is now at work at Islington, and it will speedily be followed by other establishments in the different quarters of the metropolis, and thus the difficulty of distribution, which prevented many from procuring the bread who really preferred it to all other, will be superseded. The complaint of the journeymen bakers against the long hours of work, and the foul conditions under which they labour, will be wholly disposed of by the introduction of these bread-making machines, as the work which formerly employed the men, off and on, for eighteen or twenty hours, can now be performed under two hours, and in a perfectly well-ventilated apartment; thus affording another instance of the value of machinery, not only by saving humanity much most offensive drudgery, but by eliminating those sources of disease which so often sacrifice the life of the workman to the necessities of our civilisation.