Elements of the theory and practice of cookery

Butter, 2 tablespoonfuls. Eggs, 2. Currants, about yi cupful ; extra butter and sugar. Pour the milk over the butter, salt, and sugar. When these have melted or dissolved, stir in the yeast mixed with the water. Add enough flour to make a drop-batter, beating till full of bubbles. Let it rise until very light. Add the eggs unbeaten, beat well ; add enough more flour to make a soft dough, knead thoroughly, and let it rise again. When tripled in bulk, roll out, with as little handling as possible, into a rectangle a little less than one-half inch in thickness ; spread thinly with softened butter, working from the centre toward the edges. Sprinkle with currants and sugar. Roll the dough up into a cylinder one inch in diameter, and cut it into slices one inch thick. Place these close together cut side down on shallow greased 134 THEORY AND PRACTICE OF COOKERY pans, and let them rise till very light. Dissolve one teaspoonful of sugar in two tablespoonfuls of milk; brush the tops of the rolls with this mixture, and bake them twenty minutes in a hot oven. 235. To clean currants. — (1) Sprinkle with flour and rub between the folds of a clean cloth, (2) pick off stems, (3) rinse currants in a wire strainer until the water comes through cleau, (4) shake to remove water, and (5) dry in the sun, or in a warm, not hot, oven. Digestion and Food Value of Bread 236. Try to crumble fresh bread, stale bread, bread- crust, soft toast, crisp dry toast. Which crumble more easily ? Which will be most readily broken up by the teeth ? Well-chewed bread tastes better and satisfies hunger more quickly than bread swallowed hastily. 237. Reasons for chewing bread. — Not only does chew- ing aid solution, but, by exciting the nerves communicating between the mouth and other digestive organs, it starts a flow of digestive juices toward the stomach and intestines ; so that well-chewed food meets in them a welcome not given to food hurried down the esophagus before its arrival in the mouth has been announced. For the gluten, pepsin is ready ; and any starch not wholly digested is awaited in the small intestine by a fluid, the pancreatic juice, which converts it into sugars easily absorbed by the intestinal walls and passed on into the blood-stream, 238. Completion of starch digestion. — Saliva, which is alkaline, loses its digestive power when attacked by acid. After being swallowed, it continues to digest starch for about three-quarters of an hour before sufficient hydro- BREAD 135 chloric acid accumulates in the stomach to check its action. 239. White bread compared with other foods. — A family eating a one-pound loaf of white bread for breakfast obtain about three times the nourishment they would from a pound of potatoes, and more than four times what they would from a pound (about one pint) of oatmeal mush ; indeed, oatmeal being less completely digested than wheat bread, its food value is even lower than this estimate makes it. The value of any food depends on its digestibility quite as much as on the amount of foodstuffs it contains. Entire- wheat bread, for instance, although richer than white bread in gluten and mineral matter, supplies to the body less of these materials, much of them going to waste. For constant use, white bread is probably best.