“The use of alum in bread-making,” says a distinguished chemist, “appears to be very ancient. It is one of those articles which have been the most extensively and successfully used in disguising bad flour, and the various adulterations of bread. Its injurious action upon the health is not to be compared with that of sulphate of copper, and yet, daily taken into the stomach, it may seriously affect the system.” “Thirteen bakers were condemned on the 27th of January, 1829, by the correctional tribunal of Brussels, for mixing sulphate of copper or blue vitriol with their bread. It makes the bread very white, light, large and porous, but rather tasteless; and it also enables the bread to retain a greater quantity of water, and thereby very considerably increases its weight. A much larger quantity of alum is necessary to produce these effects; but when of sufficient quantity, it strengthens the paste, and, as the bakers say, ‘makes the bread swell large.’” If the statements of our large druggists can be relied on, the public bakers of our own country probably employ ammonia more freely, at present, than any other substance I have named. Pearlash or saleratus is also used by them in considerable quantities. But even where these adulterations are not practised, the bakers’ bread is very rarely a wholesome article of diet. If any dependence is to be placed on the testimony of several of the principal bakers and flour merchants in New York, Boston and other cities, the flour which most of our public bakers work into bread, is of a very inferior quality to what is called good “family flour,” and for which they pay from one to three dollars less per barrel; and they sometimes purchase large quantities of old spoiled flour from New Orleans and elsewhere, which has heated and soured in the barrel, and perhaps become almost as solid as a mass of chalk; so that they are obliged to break it up, and grind it over, and spread it out, and expose it to the air, in order to purify it in a measure from its acid and other bad properties; and then they mix it with a portion of much better flour; and from this mixture they can make, as they say, the very largest and finest looking loaf.[B] But should the public bakers always use the best of flour, their bread, as a general statement, would still be very inferior to well made domestic bread, in point of sweetness and wholesomeness. Their mode of manufacturing bread—to say the least of it—destroys much of the virtue of the flour or meal; and hence their bread is only palatable—even to those who are accustomed to it—within twelve, or at the longest, twenty-four hours after it is baked.