Bread, cakes, and biscuits / collected and described by S. Beaty-Pownall.

Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Bread, cakes, and biscuits / collected and described by S. Beaty-Pownall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    19/216 (page 7)
    The decision is unfortunate, because it is generally admitted, and was so even in the evidence on the present case, that alum in food is injurious. It decomposes when heated in connection with flour, and its addition acts inju- riously upon the latter, rendering it indigestible. It seems a legal absurdity to regard pepper, mustard, and salt as foods and to prevent their adulteration, and yet to regard baking powder not as a food, so that it may be adulterated to any extent. The Food and Drugs Act is badly worded, and requires considerable alteration to prevent the occur- rence of such contradictions, there being in the Act a pro- vision against the use of alum in bread, but none against its use in baking powder. But be this as it may, even if only for a change, it were well if home bakery were at all events occasionally resorted to; and it would be doubtless, but for the queer sort of superstition regarding the difficulty and labour of bread- making that has grown up since the art died out of general use. You are referred to statistics to show how laborious is the life of a baker, and how unhealthy its circum- stances ; but people who make these assertions forget the difference there is between baking a batch of bread for one family occasionally in a light, airy, clean kitchen, and the incessant labour of the half a score of men who, frequently under most insanitary conditions, have to supply the wants of several hundreds of families with bread and pastry of all kinds. Granted that in large bakeries the number of assistants is greater, but then so also is the number of families to be supplied. It is quite on the cards that, if in a generation or two public kitchens (that Utopia of the harassed or incompetent housewife) become the rule, our descendants may find it as hard to get the humble chop cooked at home as we do now the making of bread. The requisites for home bakery are neither numerous nor costly, though, of course, if the demand is large, the supply of such properties will have to be in proportion, but the