p. 109 | HOT BREAD

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 17, 1888

HOT BREAD.

PHYSICIANS often recommend for sick people oatmeal or graham pudding, made by stirring the meal into water and boiling a few minutes, as one of the first things to be eaten when the stomach will not stand hearty food. Why is the meal thus prepared any more easily digested than new bread or hot muffins, which are considered unhealthy?

The two cases are by no means similar. The oatmeal or graham flour is made digestible by boiling, the starch granules being ruptured so that their contents are more easily acted upon by the digestive fluids. In the making and baking of bread the same change is accomplished. The difference between hot new bread and that which is older is essentially the same as between "heavy" and "light" bread. It is its "lightness," or porosity, which gives to bread its ready digestibility. When new it is softer, for the steam of the water it contains; and this makes it difficult of mastication, and liable to form a close and cloggy mass, which, on passing into the stomach, is less easily penetrated and acted upon by the gastric juice. By cooling and drying, it becomes firmer and more friable, so that it is more thoroughly mixed with the saliva in the mouth, and goes into the stomach in better condition for the process to which it is to be subjected there.

Bread becomes more digestible by toasting, chiefly because it is made drier and firmer—that is if toasting is properly done. The slice should be rendered crisp throughout its entire thickness. If it be merely scorched on the surface, as often happens, the interior is merely softened and made like new bread, and consequently less digestible.

While on this subject, we may remark that oatmeal, cracked wheat, and similar boiled breakfast dishes, often become more or less indigestible from being "bolted" in the usual Yankee style. They are soft and go down easily, and are shoveled or spooned into the stomach, with no delay in the mouth en route. They need mastication as really as beefsteak does, not to save one from choking (which many people seem to suppose is the sole reason for chewing), but to mix them thoroughly with saliva, which is a digestive agent and not a mere lubricant to expedite the passage of dry food down the œsophagus.—Journal of Chemistry.