SALT-RISING BREAD AND THE WELCH BACILLUS

Abstract

Until late in the nineteenth century, the preparation of bread was an uncertain and wasteful process; then Pasteur's work on fermentation led to the perfection of bakers' yeast and revolutionized the baking industry. Today bakers' bread is manufactured scientifically and with assurance. Many people, however, continue to prefer salt-rising bread, which until recently was baked at home in the crude manner of former centuries. Salt-rising bread has a distinctive flavor and odor, and its food value per unit of volume is comparatively high. It is not made with yeast, but, for sufficient gas to raise the dough, depends on chance inoculation with gas-producing organisms that naturally reside in flour. These organisms vary with different lots of dough. Thus, failures to obtain good bread are not infrequent. There are now on the market products intended to insure an abundance of gas for baking salt-rising bread, and some of these—so-called "bread starters"—are