_Bread._ As must be implied from the foregoing, the nutri meal, or graham flours are necessary for bread if it is to be used as a complete food, the “staff of life.” The white bread is made from flour which is almost pure starch; the lime, phosphorus compounds, and iron are removed. Perhaps no form of prepared food has been longer in vogue than bread. It has been known since history began. When the entire wheat kernel is used it probably maintains and supports life and strength better than any single food, but bread is not the “staff of life” unless the entire kernel is in the flour. Children should be given Graham bread or Graham crackers containing the whole of the grain in order to obtain the balanced food and the nutritive materials which are not obtained in bread made of white flour. Lime for the teeth and the growing bones is in the bran. The more porous the bread the more easily it digests. When full of pores, it is more readily mixed with the digestive juices. The pores in bread are produced by the effort of the gas, released by the yeast, to escape. When mixed with water, the flour forms a tenacious body which, when warm, expands under the pressure of the gas from the yeast, until the dough is full of gas-filled holes. The walls of gluten do not allow the gas to escape, and thus the dough is made light and porous. The more gluten the flour holds, the more water the dough will take up and the greater will be the yield of bread; hence, the more gluten, the more valuable the flour. If the bread is not porous, the fermentation is not complete, and the bread is heavy. The albumin in the walls of the expanding bubbles causes substances which contain beaten eggs to be more porous when baked. _Yeast_ is a plant fungus. In its feeding, the plant consumes sugar, changing it into alcohol and carbon dioxid. If the bread contains no sugar the yeast plant will change the starch in the flour into sugar for its feeding. Many housewives, realizing that the bread begins to “rise” quicker if it contains sugar, put a little into the sponge. Unless a large quantity of sugar is put in, the yeast will consume it and the bread will not have an unduly sweet taste. As the yeast causes fermentation, alcohol forms in the dough. This is driven off in the baking. If the bread is not thoroughly baked, fermentation continues and the bread turns sour. Bread is not thoroughly baked until fermentation ceases. It is claimed that fermentation does not entirely cease with one baking; this is the basis of the theory, held by some, that bread should be twice baked. The average housekeeper bakes an ordinary loaf one hour. Time must be given for the products of fermentation to evaporate, during the cooling of the bread, before it is eaten. Hot or insufficiently cooked bread is difficult of digestion, because it becomes more or less soggy on entering the mouth and the stomach, and the saliva and gastric juices cannot so readily mix with it.