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    The Story of a Loaf of Bread
    The Story of a Loaf of Bread
    The Story of a Loaf of Bread
    Ebook155 pages1 hour

    The Story of a Loaf of Bread

    By Thomas Barlow Wood

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    I have ventured to write this little book with some diffidence, for it deals with farming, milling and baking, subjects on which everyone has his own opinion. In the earlier chapters I have tried to give a brief sketch of the growing and marketing of wheat. If I have succeeded, the reader will realise that the farmer's share in the production of the staple food of the people is by no means the simple affair it appears to be. The various operations of farming are so closely interdependent that even the most complex book-keeping may fail to disentangle the accounts so as to decide with certainty whether or not any innovation is profitable. The farmer, especially the small farmer, spends his days in the open air, and does not feel inclined to indulge in analytical book-keeping in the evening. Consequently, the onus of demonstrating the economy of suggested innovations in practice lies with those who make the suggestions. This is one of the many difficulties which confronts everyone who sets out to improve agriculture.

    In the third and fourth chapters I have discussed the quality of wheat. I have tried to describe the investigations which are in progress with the object of improving wheat from the point of view of both the farmer and the miller, and to give some account of the success with which they have been attended. Incidentally I have pointed out the difficulties which vi pursue any investigation which involves the cultivation on the large scale of such a crop as wheat, and the consequent need of adopting due precautions to ensure accuracy before making recommendations to the farmer. Advice based on insufficient evidence is more than likely to be misleading. Every piece of misleading advice is a definite handicap to the progress of agricultural science.

    The fifth chapter is devoted to a short outline of the milling industry. In chapter VI the process of baking is described. In the last two chapters the composition of bread is discussed at some length.
    LanguageEnglish
    Publisheranboco
    Release dateSep 29, 2016
    ISBN9783736417007
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      Book preview

      The Story of a Loaf of Bread - Thomas Barlow Wood

      Manager

      With the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the design on the title page is a reproduction of one used by the earliest known Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521

      PREFACE

      I

      have

      ventured to write this little book with some diffidence, for it deals with farming, milling and baking, subjects on which everyone has his own opinion. In the earlier chapters I have tried to give a brief sketch of the growing and marketing of wheat. If I have succeeded, the reader will realise that the farmer’s share in the production of the staple food of the people is by no means the simple affair it appears to be. The various operations of farming are so closely interdependent that even the most complex book-keeping may fail to disentangle the accounts so as to decide with certainty whether or not any innovation is profitable. The farmer, especially the small farmer, spends his days in the open air, and does not feel inclined to indulge in analytical book-keeping in the evening. Consequently, the onus of demonstrating the economy of suggested innovations in practice lies with those who make the suggestions. This is one of the many difficulties which confronts everyone who sets out to improve agriculture.

      In the third and fourth chapters I have discussed the quality of wheat. I have tried to describe the investigations which are in progress with the object of improving wheat from the point of view of both the farmer and the miller, and to give some account of the success with which they have been attended. Incidentally I have pointed out the difficulties which pursue any investigation which involves the cultivation on the large scale of such a crop as wheat, and the consequent need of adopting due precautions to ensure accuracy before making recommendations to the farmer. Advice based on insufficient evidence is more than likely to be misleading. Every piece of misleading advice is a definite handicap to the progress of agricultural science.

      The fifth chapter is devoted to a short outline of the milling industry. In chapter VI the process of baking is described. In the last two chapters the composition of bread is discussed at some length. I have tried to state definitely and without bias which points in this much debated subject are known with some certainty, and which points require further investigation.

      Throughout the following pages, but especially in chapters III and IV, I have drawn freely upon the work of my colleagues. I am also much indebted to my friends, Mr A. E. Humphries, the chairman of the Home Grown Wheat Committee, and Mr E. S. Beaven of Warminster, whose advice has always been at my disposal. A list of publications on the various branches of the subject will be found at the end of the volume.

      T. B. W.

      Gonville and Caius College,

      Cambridge.

      3 December, 1912.

      THE STORY OF A LOAF OF BREAD

      CHAPTER I

      WHEAT GROWING

      Wheat is one of the most adaptable of plants. It will grow on almost any kind of soil, and in almost any temperate climate. But the question which concerns the wheat grower is not whether he can grow wheat, but whether he can grow it profitably. This is a question of course that can never receive a final answer. Any increase in the price of wheat, or any improvement that lowers the cost of cultivation, may enable growers who cannot succeed under present conditions to grow wheat at a profit. Thus if the population of the world increases, and wheat becomes scarce, the wheat-growing area will doubtless be extended to districts where wheat cannot be grown profitably under present conditions. A study of the history of wheat-growing in this country during the last century shows that the reverse of this took place. In the first half of that period the population had increased, and from lack of transport facilities and other causes the importation of foreign wheat was small. Prices were high in consequence and every acre of available land was under wheat. As transport facilities increased wheat-growing areas were developed in Canada, in the Western States of America, in the Argentine, and in Australia, and the importation of foreign wheat increased enormously. This led to a rapid decrease in prices, and wheat-growing had to be abandoned on all but the most suitable soils in the British Isles. From 1880 onwards thousands of acres of land which had grown wheat profitably for many years were laid down to grass. In the last decade the world’s population has increased faster than the wheat-growing area has been extended. Prices have consequently risen, and the area under wheat in the British Isles will no doubt increase.

      But although it cannot be stated with finality on what land wheat can be grown, or cannot be grown, at a profit, nevertheless accumulated experience has shown that wheat grows best on the heavier kinds of loam soils where the rainfall is between 20 and 30 inches per annum. It grows nearly as well on clay soils and on lighter loams, and with the methods of dry farming followed in the arid regions of the Western States and Canada, it will succeed with less than its normal amount of rainfall.

      It is now about a hundred years since chemistry was applied with any approach to exactitude to questions affecting agriculture; since for instance it was first definitely recognised that plants must obtain from their surroundings the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, potassium, calcium, and other elements of which their substance is composed. For many years there was naturally much uncertainty as to the source from which these several elements were derived. Experiment soon showed that carbon was undoubtedly taken from the air, and that its source was the carbon dioxide poured into the air by fires and by the breathing of animals. It soon became obvious too that plants obtain from the soil water and inorganic salts containing phosphorus, sulphur, potassium, calcium, and so on; but for a long time the source of the plants’ supply of nitrogen was not definitely decided. Four-fifths of the air was known to be nitrogen. The soil was known to contain a small percentage of that element, which however amounts to four or five tons per acre. Which was the source of the plants’ nitrogen could be decided only by careful experiment. As late as 1840 Liebig, perhaps the greatest chemist of his day, wrote a book on the application of chemistry to agriculture. In it he stated that plants could obtain from the air all the nitrogen they required, and that, to produce a full crop, it was only necessary to ensure that the soil should provide a sufficient supply of the mineral elements, as he called them, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, etc. Now of all the elements which the farmer has to buy for application to his land as manure, nitrogen is the most costly. At the present time nitrogen in manures costs sevenpence per pound, whilst a pound of phosphorus in manures can be bought for fivepence, and a pound of potassium for twopence. The importance of deciding whether it is necessary to use nitrogen in manures needs no further comment. It was to settle definitely questions like this that John Bennet Lawes began his experiments at his home at Rothamsted, near Harpenden in Hertfordshire, on the manuring of crops. These experiments were started almost simultaneously with the publication of Liebig’s book, and many of Lawes’ original plots laid out over 70 years ago are still in existence. The results which he obtained in collaboration with his scientific colleague, Joseph Henry Gilbert, soon overthrew Liebig’s mineral theory of manuring, and showed that in order to grow full crops of wheat it is above all things necessary to ensure that the soil should be able to supply plenty of nitrogen. Thus it was found that the soil of the Rothamsted Experiment Station was capable of growing wheat continuously year after year. With no manure the average crop was only about 13 bushels per acre. The addition of a complete mineral manure containing phosphorus, calcium, potassium, in fact all the plant wants from the soil except nitrogen, only increased the crop to 15 bushels per acre. Manuring with nitrogen on the other hand increased the crop to 21 bushels per acre. Obviously on the Rothamsted soil wheat has great difficulty in getting all the nitrogen it wants, but is well able to fend for itself as regards what Liebig called minerals. This kind of experiment has been repeated on almost every kind of soil in the United Kingdom, and it is found that the inability of wheat to supply itself with nitrogen applies to all soils, except the black soils of the Fens which contain about ten times more nitrogen than the ordinary arable soils of the country. It is the richness in nitrogen of the virgin soils of the Western States and Canada, and of the black soils of Russia, that forms one of the chief factors in their success as wheat-growing lands. It must be added, however, that continuous cropping without manure must in time exhaust the stores of nitrogen in even the richest soil, and when this time comes the farmers in these at present favoured regions will undoubtedly find wheat-growing more costly by whatever sum per acre they may find it necessary to expend in nitrogenous manure. The world’s demand for nitrogenous manure is therefore certain to increase. Such considerations as these inspired Sir William Crookes’ Presidential address to the British Association in 1898, in which he foretold the probability of a nitrogen famine, and explained how it must lead to a shortage in the world’s wheat supply. The remedy he suggested was the utilization of water-power to provide the energy for generating electricity, by means of which the free nitrogen of the air should be brought into combination in such forms that it could be used for manure. It

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