a sack of flour of a special grade will take more wetting into its mixture and yield a greater quantity of bread than a sack of another grade will, the quality of the bread not being taken into account. Spring wheat has a harder grain than winter wheat and yields a harder and grittier flour, which absorbs more water and is easier to handle successfully than winter wheat flour, in bread-making. But equally good bread can be made from either variety, although more delicate cake and pastry can be made from winter wheat than from spring wheat flour, and what is known in the market as "pastry flour" is simply flour made of winter wheat. Compressed Yeast. — Yeast is a vegetable germ found upon the skin of grapes, plums, and some other fruits — in fact, the beautiful shade upon the skin of those fruits known as ' ' bloom ' ' is produced by the yeast plants that float in the atmosphere settling upon them. If yeast germs get, or are put, into a substance in which they find material adapted to their development they increase very rapidly, and by their vegetative action during the period of growth cause the substance in which they are growing to bubble or ferment. The manufacturers of yeast multiply these germs indefinitely by inducing fermentation in a sweet infusion of malt, rye, and corn, and millions of the germs rise to the surface of the fermenting liquid, forming a scum resembling the froth of new milk. This scum is removed, run into vats of cold water, and allowed to settle to the bottom. The water is then pumped off", and the yeast pumped into hydraulic presses and reduced by pressure to the con- Bread- Making. 187 sistency desired, when it is made into cakes and put upon the market as ' ' compressed yeast. ' ' And from the fact that compressed yeast is the purest yeast that scientific research has yet discovered, and that it is im- possible by mechanical skill to crowd a greater number of yeast germs into a given space than are crowded into a cake of compressed yeast, it goes almost without saying that compressed yeast is the best ferment known to the world to-day for bread-making. It has been demonstrated over and over again that a certain quantity of pure, strong yeast is necessary to produce the best results in bread-making — that it is, in fact, impossible to make the best quality of bread unless the proper quantity of yeast be used ; and housekeepers who, to save two or three cents on each baking, buy liquid yeast at the bake shop, or dry yeast cakes at the corner grocery, always have inferior bread and are losers in nearly every way, in the long run. In yeast fermen- tation the decomposition of the starch in flour yields the gas that lightens the dough, while in these other fermen- tations it is the gluten that suffers ; and as starch is the most plentiful and least valuable portion of the flour, economical considerations alone should induce the use of compressed yeast in preference to any other ferments. Pure yeast produces sweet, nutty-flavored, wholesome bread, while diseased and putrefactive ferments produce the coarse, rough crumb, the pale, flinty crust, and the flat, sour loaf that are so disappointing and discouraging to the bread-maker. The alleged costliness of com- pressed yeast would be a serious objection to its use in many families, if the allegation were correct. But no 1 88 The Art of Cookery.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

a sack of flour of a special grade will take more wetting into its mixture and yield a greater quantity of bread than a sack of another grade will, the quality of the bread not being taken into account. Spring wheat has a harder grain than winter wheat and yields a harder and grittier flour, which absorbs more water and is easier to handle successfully than winter wheat flour, in bread-making. But equally good bread can be made from either variety, although more delicate cake and pastry can be made from winter wheat than from spring wheat flour, and what is known in the market as "pastry flour" is simply flour made of winter wheat. Compressed Yeast. — Yeast is a vegetable germ found upon the skin of grapes, plums, and some other fruits — in fact, the beautiful shade upon the skin of those fruits known as ' ' bloom ' ' is produced by the yeast plants that float in the atmosphere settling upon them. If yeast germs get, or are put, into a substance in which they find material adapted to their development they increase very rapidly, and by their vegetative action during the period of growth cause the substance in which they are growing to bubble or ferment. The manufacturers of yeast multiply these germs indefinitely by inducing fermentation in a sweet infusion of malt, rye, and corn, and millions of the germs rise to the surface of the fermenting liquid, forming a scum resembling the froth of new milk. This scum is removed, run into vats of cold water, and allowed to settle to the bottom. The water is then pumped off", and the yeast pumped into hydraulic presses and reduced by pressure to the con- Bread- Making. 187 sistency desired, when it is made into cakes and put upon the market as ' ' compressed yeast. ' ' And from the fact that compressed yeast is the purest yeast that scientific research has yet discovered, and that it is impossible by mechanical skill to crowd a greater number of yeast germs into a given space than are crowded into a cake of compressed yeast, it goes almost without saying that compressed yeast is the best ferment known to the world to-day for bread-making. It has been demonstrated over and over again that a certain quantity of pure, strong yeast is necessary to produce the best results in bread-making — that it is, in fact, impossible to make the best quality of bread unless the proper quantity of yeast be used ; and housekeepers who, to save two or three cents on each baking, buy liquid yeast at the bake shop, or dry yeast cakes at the corner grocery, always have inferior bread and are losers in nearly every way, in the long run. In yeast fermentation the decomposition of the starch in flour yields the gas that lightens the dough, while in these other fermentations it is the gluten that suffers ; and as starch is the most plentiful and least valuable portion of the flour, economical considerations alone should induce the use of compressed yeast in preference to any other ferments. Pure yeast produces sweet, nutty-flavored, wholesome bread, while diseased and putrefactive ferments produce the coarse, rough crumb, the pale, flinty crust, and the flat, sour loaf that are so disappointing and discouraging to the bread-maker. The alleged costliness of compressed yeast would be a serious objection to its use in many families, if the allegation were correct. But no 1 88 The Art of Cookery.

The art of cookery