"Probably the first and most common is ordinary yeast ^read. The next in importance, or at least the next best known, is brown bread, or Graham bread. Recently the entire wheat bread is becoming much in favor. The various other breads are known as aerated bread, rye bread, milk bread, unleavened bread, malted bread, salt-rising bread, germ bread, gluten bread. This does not include every variety or patent bread, but substantially represents the different processes and kinds of bread. Others are mere variations of those enumerated. In yeast bread the sponge is formed by the yeast ferment setting free carbonic acid gas, which passes through the dough and makes it porous. Ærated bread is a chemical process. The gas necessary for making the dough spongy is generated in a separate vessel by the use of sulphuric acid on limestone, most usually marble dust. The gas is forced into water slightly acidulated, and this is mixed with the dough in strong receivers, where the gas is kept from escaping. After the mixing or kneading, the bread is baked the same as any other. This process made considerable headway for a time, but has been almost entirely abandoned of recent years.

Graham bread is merely a mixture of common flour, bran and middlings, it is much coarser than ordinary bread, and is highly recommended in constipation. Its unpalatableness makes it unpopular. The entire wheat bread has already been described. Milk bread is made from ordinary dough, to which milk has been added. This improves the flavor and adds to its nutritive properties, but it does not keep sweet very long.

"Unleavened bread is not fermented at all, and no means are taken to aerate it by any chemical process. Flour is usually mixed to the proper consistency and then flattened out into thin cakes or strips, and baked quickly. Very nice biscuits can be made by mixing flour or milk at a very low temperature (ice cold), and baking in an unusually hot oven. The biscuits must be made thin, and the heat sufficient to quickly generate steam enough to make the biscuits almost as light as if chemicals had been used. Malted bread is made by the addition of barley malt to the sponge or dough. This quickens the fermentation and makes a very sweet bread; so that malted bread is said to be more digestible than ordinary bread, and the flavor more pleasant.

"Germ bread is made of that portion of the wheat known as the embryo, the part that grows. It is very rich in gluten, almost as much gluten as starch. It is therefore a specially valuable food for some people. Gluten bread is supposed to be pure gluten without any starch whatever. It is made by taking wheat middlings or flour and enclosing it in a bag or sack and washing until the starch is all dissolved and taken up by the water.

The gluten is not soluble in cold water, and therefore remains in the bag. The special value of gluten bread is because it contains no starch and is used in that class of disease known as glycosuria, or diabetes, and for obese people. It is also used in intestinal dyspepsia."

"Doctor, you haven't lived in the South very much, or else you would have spoken of biscuits the first thing, instead of yeast bread. A good many people think them a great source of dyspepsia and unfit to eat, while there are others who think light bread unfit to eat, and refuse to eat anything except biscuits when they can be obtained.

Will You Tell Which Is Better?

"Biscuits are not objectionable because of their form or name, nor merely because they are eaten hot."