Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 03.djvu/501

* BREACH. 441 BREAD. opinion that actions for breach of promise to marry "should be looked upon with a jealous eye,' "and repeated attempts have been made in England to abolish them by act of Parliament. Althoufih these attempts have been unsuecessful, it is declared by English writers that breach-of- promise suits have not borne as abundant har- vests in England as in the United States. See Maeriage: Betrothal; and Tobt; and the au- thorities there referred to. Bkeaoi of Tklst is a violation by a trustee of any of his legal duties. It may render the trustee liable to respond in damages, or to re- moval from his trusteeship, or to criminal prose- cution, according to the nature of his miscon- duct. Some modern statutes have so extended the crime of larceny (q.v.) as to include a breach of trust, if the latter consists in secreting, with- holding, or otherwise converting to the trustee's own use, property which has come into his pos- session by virtue of his trusteeship. See Tbust; Tristee. Breach of Wakhanty. a breach of a con- tract of warranty. See Warbaj^ty. BREAD (AS. bread, Tcel. braup, Ger. Brot, akin to AS. 6reoic<3»i, Eng. brew, broth). Cereals of some kind or other have always made an im- portant item of human food, and of all the forms in which they have been used bread has proved the most satisfactory. Wheat, rye, corn (maize), and oats are commonly used for bread-making: less commonly, barley, buckwheat, rice. etc. To prepare the grain for bread-making it is usually cleaned, crushed, and bolted to obtain a fine, soft powder called flour or meal. The flour is made into a dough with water, and baked. Sometimes the dough is made with milk, or milk and water. Salt is usually added, and often a little sugar and lard or butter. If the dough is ferlnented or leavened in any way before baking, the re- sulting product is called leavened bread. If no leavening agent is used, unleavened bread re- sults. The common leavening agents are yeasts, both wild and cultivated, leaven, i.e. dough saved from a previous baking, and chemical mixtures or baking-powders. The bread most commonly eaten in the United States, and often called white bread, is made, whether at home or at a bakery, from some one of the high grades of wheat flour or from a mixture of two or more grades. It is usually leavened with yeast. The primitive way of making bread was to soak the grain in water, subject it to pressure, and then dry it by natural or artificial heat. An improvement was to [)ound or bray the grain in a mortar, or between two flat stones, before mois- tening and heating. A rather more elaborate bruising or grinding leads to such simple forms of bread as the oat cakes of Scotland, which are prepared by moistening oatmeal with water con- taining common salt, kneading with the hands upon a baking-board, rolling the mass into a thin sheet, and then heating before a good fire or on an iron plate called a girdle, which is susjiended above the fire. In a similar manner the barley- meal and pease-meal baiiiioi-b.i of Scotland are prepared. In Eastern countries, as well as in Scotland, wheat flour is kneaded with water and rolled into thin sheets called scones. The most interesting of the unleavened breads is, perhaps, the Passover bread, which has been used during Passover week by orthodox .Tews from the time of Moaes until now. It is simply a mixture of flour and water baked in small round cakes until it ig dry and hard, and is not unlike plain water crackers. Pilot bread, or ship's biscuit, is another simple preparation of flour and water so cooked that it can be kept for almost any length of time. Crackers, or biscuits, as they are often called, especially in England, are va- rieties of unleavened breiul. Jlilk, butter, lard, spices, dried fruits — anything or everything de- sired to give them particular consistency, color, or flavor — is mixed with the flour and water, and the dough is then passed through very ingenious cutting machines and ([uickly baked in a hot oven. Such crackers are a concentrated form of nourishment, as they contain little water in pro- portion to their bulk, and are fairly solid in con- sistency. Leavened or femiented bread is rendered light and porous by the formation within it of car- bonic-acid gas. which distends it. This process is brought about either ( I ) by the use of leaven or of yeast, which causes the carbonic acid to form by the action of fermentation: or (2) by the use of baking-powders, which supply the neces- sary carbon dioxide to the dough "by chemical reaction. I^eaven is simply dough, or" a mixture of flour, which is in a state of fermenta- tion. The knowledge of its action may have been accidentally discovered by attempting to combine with a "fresh mixture dough which'^had been left over from a previous baking. It is probable that the use of leaven was first known to the Egyptians, that the ttreeks as well as the .Jews learned it from them, and that the Romans learned it from the Greeks. Through the Ro- mans this knowledge was spread far and wide tlirough the subject nations which came under their influence. This method of bread-making is still extensively employed in certain parts of Europe. Great care and skill are required in the mak- ing of leavened bread. There is always danger that during the process of fermentation lactic acid and other products which are disagreeable to the taste will form along with the carbonic- acid gas: then, if the leaven stands too long, it will reach the state of putrid fermentation. With the knowledge of the yeast-plant (see Yeast), which was first applied to beer-making, the method of making fermented bread has been changed by substituting yeast for decomposing dinigh. The action of the yeast-plant — like that of leaven — when brought into contact with flour and water is to develop carbon dioxide and al- cohol ; the latter passes ofl' in the oven in the form of vapor, the former is largely retained in the dough. The lightness of the bread depends upon the amount of this gas which remains im- pristmed in the dough and distends it; hence it is due to the tenacity with which the grains of flour cling together, or, in other words, to the stickiness of the flour. It is in this respect that the superiority of wheat flour over that from all other grains lies. The sticky gluten of wheat does not allow the gas to escape. For this reason the quality of hread made from less tenacious flour is improved by mixing with it a portion of wheat flour. The chemical. reactions concerned in bread- making and the conditions under which they are pniduced are easily understood. The process consists in adding to the flour and warm water