Under this head we intend to treat of the various substitutes which have been used at different times, and in different countries, for bread made of wheat flour. We allude to bread made of rye, barley, oats, peas, beans, buckwheat, maize, farinaceous roots, and of mixed substances, etc. This subject is not without interest, independent of utility, and a work of this kind would scarcely be complete if it were not introduced. We shall enter upon it with few general remarks.

Bread Corn - properly so called, of which bread is made in this country, and other civilized nations, comprehends the seeds of all cerealia, or farinaceous grass-like plants, for they all contain a farinaceous or mealy substance of a like nature; and which substance is chiefly composed of starch. The seeds or grain in common use are, first and principally, wheat; second, rye; and third, barley.

Wheat is the only grain from which really good, porous, or light bread can be made; but rye and barley are occasionally used, as well as other grain. The bread, however, is of an inferior quality. A sort of bread is also made from oats, maize, rice, millet, etc.

Rice is said, and no doubt truly, to nourish more human beings than all the other seeds together used as food; and it is by many considered the most nutritive of all kinds of grain. Accum, in the Art of making Bread, says, that "it has been ascertained, that one part of rice contains as much food and useful nourishment as six of wheat;" an assertion by the way which we are much inclined to disbelieve. But be this as it may, there is no doubt that rice makes a very nourishing and healthy food, notwithstanding the prejudices that prevailed against it, on the unfounded allegation that it caused diseases in the eye. Rice is the principal food of most of the eastern nations, a fact which shows that it is not unhealthy. Rice is not, however, often made into bread without the addition of flour, and when iris, it forms a loaf of very inferior quality.

Maize is frequently employed as bread-corn in America, but it will not by itself make good loaf-bread; but unleavened cakes are made of it, very nutritive and palatable.

Oatmeal is seldom used for making loaf-bread, but is extensively used in the north of Great Britain in making unleavened bread, commonly called oat-cakes. It may be observed here, that the objection to biscuits, oat-cakes, maize-cakes, and other unleavened bread, on the ground of their being unhealthy, and of course not nutritive, appears to be without foundation. There can be no doubt, however, that they are inferior as food to good wheaten loaf-bread.

The seeds of leguminous plants, such as pease and beans, are sometimes used as substitutes for bread-corn. They yield a great deal of meal, which is of a sweetish taste, but it forms a coarse bread, and is generally considered neither palatable nor digestible. Dr. Cullen says, that "on certain farms in his country, upon which the leguminous seeds are produced in great abundance, the labouring servants are much fed upon this kind of grain; but if such servants are removed to a farm upon which the leguminous seeds are not in such plenty, and they are, therefore, fed with the cerealia (wheat, barley, etc.), they soon find a decay of strength; and it is common for servants, in making such removals, to insist on their being provided daily, or weekly, with a certain quantity of the leguminous meal.'1 It does not, however, follow, that pease or bean-flower bread would be found generally so nutritive or digestible as wheat-flour bread. A great deal may be attributed to habit, and the laborious employment of farmers' servants in the open air.

All the vegetable substances from which bread is made, contain more or less of starch, or what is otherwise called amylaceous fecuia, and this is the most valuable and nutritive part of all such substances, whether they consist of grain, or roots, etc.

We scarcely need observe, that the potatoe, amongst roots, is the most extensively used as a substitute for bread. In many countries, particularly Ireland, it is almost the exclusive food of the poor. The potatoe contains a great deal of starch.

Rice, notwithstanding its rough and dry qualities, as a farinaceous vegetable, is capable of being converted into bread, without the addi tion of any other substance. The Americans, however, make bread of rice by washing it in water till perfectly clean. They then, after the rice has been sufficiently drained, put it into a mortar, and reduce it while damp into a sort of powder; it is then completely dried, and passed through a hair-sieve. The flour thus obtained, it is said, is then generally mixed with a little Indian corn-meal, and boiled into a thickish consistence, which is sometimes mixed with boiled pota toes, and fermented and baked in tins, or pans, in the usual manner. The bread, we are told, made in this way, is light and wholesome - "pleasing to the eye, and agreeable to the taste."

But a sort of bread may be made from rice, without the addition of any other kind of meal. Let a sufficient quantity of rice-flour be put into a kneading trough, and at the same time let a due proportion of flour be boiled, into which throw a few handsful of rice in the grain, and boil it till it is broken. This compound will form a thick and viscous substance, which is poured upon the flour, and the whole is kneaded with a mixture of salt and yeast, or other fermenting matter. The dough is then covered with flannel or other cloths to keep it warm, and left to rise. This dough, though firm at first, in the course of fermentation becomes as liquid as soup, and is quite incapable of being worked into loaves, in the usual manner, by the hand. The following is the mode by which this difficulty is surmounted: - The oven is heated while the dough is rising; and it being sufficiently hot, the dough is put into a tin pan, which is covered with a paper, or large leaves. The tin is then placed in the oven, and immediately reversed or turned upside down; the heat prevents the dough from spreading, and, in fact, fixes it in that shape given it by the stewpan or box. This bread is said to be "both beautiful and good;" but when it gets stale, it becomes very much deteriorated - as indeed does all bread in which there is rice.

Potatoes, mixed in various proportions with meal, are frequently employed in the making of bread. The London bakers all use them in greater or less quantities - not, as they say, to save flour, but to assist fermentation. There are various ways in which potatoes may be used with meal in the production of bread, - potatoes alone will not make good bread; the potatoe is not of an adhesive quality, and the bread is not only brown and heavy, but crumbles to pieces. M. Parmentier, to render it more adhesive, mixed with the potatoe-meal a decoction of bran, and sometimes honey and water; either of which, he says, much improved it, by rendering it lighter, better coloured, well tasted, and sufficiently consistent.

He obtained also, he adds, well-fermented bread, of a good colour and taste, by mixing some potatoe pulp with meal of wheat, or potatoe-meal, with the addition of yeast and salt. After repeated trials, he recommends, in times of scarcity, a mixture of potatoes with the meal of wheat, in preference to the meal of any other grain. Where no flour or grain can be obtained, Parmentier recommends the use of bread made from the amylaceous (partaking of starch) powder of potatoes, - potatoe pulp, mixed and fermented, with the addition of honey. Potatoe-meal, when mixed with water, acquires a gluey consistence, but bread made from this and the flour of wheat is never of a good colour. That, however, which is made of a mixture of the pulp with the flour of wheat, is much whiter. Parmentier, we are informed, made bread very much resembling that of wheat, by mixing four ounces of amylaceous powder of potatoes, one drachm of mucilage, extracted from barley, one drachm of the bran of rye, and one drachm of glutinous matter, dried and pounded into powder.

A German writer upon country affairs, of the name of Khyogg, who has obtained the name of the Rustic Socrates, recommends, that potatoes well boiled and carefully peeled should be put into a kneading-trough, covered with boiling water, and beaten or bruised till they are converted into a kind of soup, throughout of one consistence. This soup may be mixed with the flour of wheat in the proportion of one-fourth, one-third, and even one-half; and if the flour be of good quality, the bread will be found pleasant, nourishing, and wholesome. This is the principal food of the peasantry in German Lorraine, and the people of that country are remarkable for their healthy, robust, and vigorous constitutions; the young men are tall and handsome, and the country is thickly populated.

In Vogstand and in Saxony, potatoes are prepared for bread by peeling them, grating them very fine, and by putting the pulp into a milk-pail, or some other suitable vessel. It is then mixed with cold water, which is allowed to remain upon the pulp twenty-four hours. The water is then drawn off, and other water added, and again drawn till the water comes off quite pure. The potatoe pulp is then drained through a clean cloth, and then spread upon a plate, or some other surface, till dry. After this, it is reduced to a fine powder, mixed with an equal portion of wheat flour, and made into bread by the usual process.

We have thought it right to lay before our readers the various ways in which it has been recommended to employ potatoes in making bread in times of scarcity; but after all, our own opinion is, that the best and most economical mode of using potatoes is simply to boil them as they do in Ireland, where, it is much to be regretted, they stand instead of all other food to the mass of the population.

Many other substances have been employed in making bread other than those of the flour of farinaceous vegetables, such as wheat, barley, rye, Indian-corn, oats, etc The latter grain makes an excellent unleavened bread, and is much eaten in Scotland, Lancashire, and several of the northern English counties. It is called oat-cake, and is preferred by many persons to wheaten bread.