Bread
l.THE bread question is still under discussion as I write, but by the time this goes to press let us hope' the question will be honourably settled and the conversation hi bus and trans and train and tube hove switched on to some of her sabie-et.
have been finding it quite a good antidote k, the tragic and the ignoble aspects of this controversy. Ira consider bread itself and the , romantic part it has played in our lives, for bread really is full of romance. No doubt if we could remember our first crust it would be with the thrill that accompanied the feel of that tough and unfamiliar °Wirt and the glorious sensation of at last grinding toothless gums upon some resisting edge! That memory is, alas, lost to most of us. but 1 stilt remember the glorious crustiness of our nursery loaf—a cottage—and how we toed to compete for the outside top crust and hated the dull half below whirls, in addition to not being crisp, was so often black underneath. The other shapes were drill except for that long loaf with a plait along the top—provided one could get the plait!
ADOLESCENCE brought bore dom with bread, but once across the Channel what delight there was its those little flaky croissants, warm to one's morning coffee; and in the enormous round loaves that were so attest pressed to a stout French bosom to be eat; and in brioches for one's gainer!
German bread required getting used to. I remember how I hated the sour, close-grained Schwarzbrat at first but came to relish it later, as well as those rolls covered with poppy-seeds that we had with our afternoon coffee; and then the bread rats with currant eyes and stiff bristle whiskers that we bought in the Rottenfengerhaus in Hamelin!
One could go on for hours writing about bread, for it has a whole literature of its own and a wonderful history, from the days when the fermentation of dough was first discovered—probably accidentallp—in Asia. and the knowledge travelled through Greece to Egypt where they alway.s kept a portion of the dough for the raising of the next batch of loaves. It was not until the' be. ginning of the 17.th century that brewers' yeast wat used in breadmaking and the " staff of life" became snore like the commodity about which no cure all so much exercised to-day.
Julian