The bread and biscuit baker's and sugar-boiler's assistant : including a large variety of modern recipes for bread - tea cakes - hard and fancy biscuits - buns - gingerbreads - shortbreads - pastry - custards - fruit cakes - small goods for small masters - confections in sugar - lozenges - ice creams - preserving fruit - chocolate, etc. etc., with remarks on the art of bread-making and chemistry as applied to bread-making / by Robert Wells.

  • Wells, Robert.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The bread and biscuit baker's and sugar-boiler's assistant : including a large variety of modern recipes for bread - tea cakes - hard and fancy biscuits - buns - gingerbreads - shortbreads - pastry - custards - fruit cakes - small goods for small masters - confections in sugar - lozenges - ice creams - preserving fruit - chocolate, etc. etc., with remarks on the art of bread-making and chemistry as applied to bread-making / by Robert Wells. 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.

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    kinds from different sources; that dextrine is soluble In water and insoluble in alcohol; that protoplasm, the basis of all life, consists of proteine, compounds, mineral salts, nitrogen, &c. ? And do not the meaning and use of terms familiar in scientific chemistry—such as diastase, cerealin, gluten, and others—only perplex the ordinary journeyman baker, and make him think that the less he has to do with science, the more easily he will get his life “ rubbed through.” It is impossible for working bakers to become acquainted with these things while in the bakehouse ; and while there are in many towns such valuable institutions as free libraries, mechanics’ institutes, &c., they are not available to the ordinary baker, as his hours are so excep- tional. The baker’s hours of labour, indeed, are shorter in many places than they used to be, and he is no longer called u the white slave.” Still, the spirit of competition is so strong that a baker has to work much harder proportionally than other working men, and his mind is in no condition, in the little spare time he has, to study the problems of science; and no- body can expect the baker to know, as it were by intuition, the whys and the wherefores of chemistry. However, what he has learnt in the practice of his art, and what the common custom of the trade has handed down to him, he may use to more or less advantage, according as he has more or less per- sonal skill. In the case of fermentation, which may be described as the very backbone of bread-making, a baker will find plenty to study and to think about, from his first “ setting the sponge ” until his bread is out of the oven, without per plexing himself over problems about which he can understair little or nothing. With time and money at his disposal, however, the study of chemistry opens up a wide field to the studious baker, and would no doubt reward him for his pains, and at the same time prove a great gain to his trade; and I believe there are