Dr. WESENER. Would you mind if I left that to my associate? He has a lot of breads here, and I am afraid that I am usurping his ground.

Mr. SLOAN. My associate says that you went over that ground before I came in.

Dr. WESENER. Yes. Mr. Teller will cover that better than I could. Mr. HILL. This flour called cake flour, does that have starch in it? Dr. WESENER. Yes; that is a soft-wheat flour, and that has a high starch content.

As I showed in this Table C, if you will turn to this bulletin I referred to, issued by the American Manufacturers' Association, of Products from Corn, on page 54, the starch content in A, you understand, which is the soft-wheat flour, will be the same in starch content as C, which is a blend of 80 per cent of B, which is the hard wheat from the Southwest, and 20 per cent cornstarch; provided the weight or the moisture of the two flours is the same. That is, the starch then will be the same in proportion, in amount, and therefore you have not changed anything in that flour; that is, you have a soft flour, that is all; and it has the same amount of starch as the soft-wheat flour. I think that covers all I want to say.

Mr. HELVERING. In this bulletin, on page 54, I notice two pictures of a loaf of bread which has been cut in half. I want to ask you, is it a fact or is it not that the cornstarch admixture-the loaf made from that admixture-is more soggy than the loaf made from the wheat flour?

Dr. WESENER. No; not if you use the right flour. As I say, you can not use a very soft winter wheat and bring about a blend of that kind that will give you that loaf of bread. That is the reason it requires a miller to do this who knows the quality of flour he is working with. That will be all right for biscuit or crackers, or, if you want to make angel-food cake; then you would want an exceedingly soft flour.

Mr. HELVERING. What I am trying to get at is, does the same chemical process take place by heating a loaf made of this admixture as takes place by heating a bread made of pure wheat flour?

Dr. WESENER. If the gluten is there in sufficient quantity to aerate the starch in the same way as in the pure flour. Almost one-half of the flour on the market is made of soft wheat.

Mr. HELVERING. That is what causes the chemical process?

Dr. WESENER. That is a chemical process and also a physical process. Of course heat acts in a physical way by rupturing the contour of the cell.

STATEMENT OF MR. GEORGE L. TELLER, 31 NORTH STATE STREET, CHICAGO, ILL.

Mr. LANNEN. Will you please state your qualifications.

Mr. TELLER. I am a graduate of the Michigan Agricultural College; assistant chemist of the Michigan Agricultural Station, adjunct professor of chemistry and agriculture in the Arkansas University; chemist of the Arkansas Experiment Station; chemist to the Chidlow Institute of Baking Technology, of Chicago; since which time I have been connected with the Columbus laboratories as analytical

and food chemist, and giving instructions in milling and in baking technology.

I also was born in southern Michigan, and brought up on Michigan wheat flour. The result is no reflection on the product itself, but possibly a result of inheritance.

This bread [exhibiting a half loaf of bread] was baked from ordinary spring wheat flour and a mixture of cornstarch. Twenty per cent of the wheat flour was replaced with 20 per cent of cornstarch. No effort was made to select the flour or the cornstarch. It was the flour that was used in the hotel where the bread was baked. The process of breadmaking was essentially that which is followed by the breadmaker in the bakeshop. The conditions of breadmaking were not the best, because the shop in which it was baked was a hotel shop, intended for the baking of ordinary pastries and other things that are used in hotels. In the modern bread shop special requirements are at hand for the making of bread of the best quality.

In the making of bread we mix together a quantity of flour, water, yeast, sugar, lard, and salt. The amount of water we mix in depends upon the character of the flour we are to use. The amount of yeast we take depends upon the character of the flour we are to use or the time we are to have for the baking of the bread. Wheat flour is especially adapted for the making of bread because it contains protein of an especially peculiar character. The protein of wheat flour is capable of forming a glutinous mass somewhat like rubber when it is wet with water in the form of dough. There are no other grains or cereals that produce this, with the exception of some that are closely related to wheat.

There is a wide variation in the amount of this protein which is present in wheat of different kinds. The soft winter wheat flours contain the least. The spring wheat flours contain about as large a proportion as you find anywhere, and the hard winter wheat flours contain about the same.

Reference has been made to the United States Department of Agriculture standards for flour. I am quite familiar with those standards, because when the first newspaper publications of the standards adopted by the department came forth, it was stated that the minimum amount of nitrogen in flours should be 1.33 per cent. This was a reflection upon the good old flours of Michigan, upon which I was raised, and I immediately got in touch with the Secretary of Agriculture, and called his attention to the fact that that standard would exclude a large proportion of the soft winter wheat flours. The Committee on Standards at their next meeting called for information. The information was at hand, because in the course of the analysis of a great number of samples of flour, a large number had been examined which contained a proportion of nitrogen much less than the standard called for. I came across a number of the cards that were taken at that time to give some information upon that point.

I might read some of the places where flour samples were obtained which were below the 1.37 per cent standard as given. Some of them were Reno, Nev.; Detroit, Mich.; Alton, Ill.; Chicago, Ill.; Elkhart, Ind.; Traverse City, Mich.; Asheville, N. C.; Hillsdale, Mich.; Albion, Mich.; Saginaw, Mich.; and other places. A considerable number of them ran below 1.37 per cent of nitrogen. 1.37

per cent of nitrogen would be equivalent to substantially 7.8 per cent of gluten or protein. It is my habit and custom, based upon right principles, I take it, to use the terms "gluten" and "protein" synonymously for the trade of bakers or millers. To tell why would be a long story; but they are substantially equivalent.

Mr. FORDNEY. Were those tests made on Michigan-grown wheat? Mr. TELLER. Yes, from Michigan wheat. We occasionally get such Michigan flour now, but not as much as formerly, because there is not as much wheat grown in Michigan now as there was formerly. Mr. HELVERING. When was that?

Mr. TELLER. This was in the early nineties. The conditions are not confined to that time, but these cards are taken from that time. I am sure it was in the early part of 1900.

Mr. HELVERING. I have not known for many years of any wheat that tested so low.

Mr. TELLER. We occasionally get wheats from Atchison, Kans., some of which are pretty low down.

Mr. SLOAN. Have they not been breeding up their wheat with special reference to raising the gluten or protein content? Mr. TELLER. They have been trying that.

Mr. SLOAN. Are they not successful?

Mr. TELLER. No; apparently not. The conditions are dependent upon the climate and seasons, and where an effort is made in certain sections, like Michigan, to introduce a wheat of fair protein content, after a year or two they go down to about normal. Some years the average will rise, and I know of spring wheat flours which have been 12 per cent. I have records where we made thousands of examinations of flour where the leading brands of Minneapolis do not go very much above along about 6.7.

Mr. SLOAN. Those percentages are among the minimums?

Mr. TELLER. Those percentages are among the minimums for that class of wheats.

It is a practice with the large millers at this time from all over the country to make a selection of the wheat that they use in making their flours. They have chemists and they have access to chemical laboratories for the purpose of obtaining the amount of protein which is in the wheat that they are to use and in the flour which the wheats will produce, and they make a great effort to keep the amount of gluten constant in their flours, because they know that when they send a lot of flour to a baker who has been using their flour before, if they have not the constant amount of gluten, he will have trouble with the flour in baking his bread.

The large mills of the Northwest were the first to make these tests for their own protection. They employ chemists and plan a wheat to make a flour containing the proper amount of gluten, so that their bakers and the other people when they get the flour can get the results out of it when they use it.

Mr. FORDNEY. Would there be any difference in the percentage of those qualities found in two wheats, the same grade of wheat, the same kind of wheat, grown in the same neighborhood?

Mr. TELLER. Yes.

Mr. FORDNEY. Depending upon the character of the soil, or the fertilizers used?

Mr. TELLER. While in Arkansas I made a cutting of wheat day by day for 40 days, getting the ground as entirely uniform as possi

ble, but it was not uniform because that was not the most uniform soil that they had in the country. Once in a while I would run into spots where there was more water than there was in other places. The grain was a good deal softer, and would show in the protein that was in the flour that was cut on that particular day.

Mr. FORDNEY. So that there is a variation dependent upon the soil conditions as well as the drainage of the soil?

Mr. TELLER. The drainage of the soil. The more water in the soil the softer the wheat. The irrigated districts of the West, where they grow wheat side by side with the dry-land method of culture, produce in the irrigated districts wheat softer than that which is produced on the dry lands by dry-land cultivation.

As I say, the millers make great efforts to blend their flours so as to get a uniform protein and gluten content. They use one wheat which contains much protein and another which contains considerably less. I do not want to burden you with mathematics, but if you will take 100 pounds of wheat flour containing 12 per cent of gluten and add to that 20 pounds of cornstarch you will have 120 pounds of the mixture, and in 100 pounds of that mixture you will have 10 pounds of gluten.

Mr. FORDNEY. You have reduced the quantity?

Mr. TELLER. You have reduced the quantity of gluten.
Mr. FORDNEY. By the addition of that cornstarch?

Mr. TELLER. By the blending of the wheat flour and the cornstarch. You have reduced the quantity of gluten. Now, the amount of gluten in the flour is a very good index to the amount of starch which is present. Wheat flour consists essentially of moisture about 12 per cent to 13 per cent of gluten, which varies, a small amount of mineral matter or ash, about 11 per cent of oil, fiber, and the rest of carbohydrate, which is almost entirely starch. If, now, you take from 100 pounds of that flour which has been blended by the use of 20 per cent of cornstarch the amount of gluten which is present and the amount of water and the amount of fat and oil, which are small in quantity, you will have left-if the moisture were 12 per cent, you would have left in the neighborhood of 78.6 per cent of starch. If you will take a soft winter wheat containing 8 per cent of gluten and blend that with a winter wheat or a hard spring wheat which contains 12 per cent of gluten, you will have exactly the same amount of gluten; you will have substantially the same amount of other ingredients, as when you blend together wheat flour and cornstarch. The millers blend and get 10 per cent of gluten. That, I will say, is substantially the amount of gluten which we have found in the large part of hard wheat flour which has been analyzed at the laboratory during the present season-the better grades of flour.

Mr. FORDNEY. Do I understand you now correctly to say that if you take the flour from two kinds of wheat, one of a kind which produces 8 per cent gluten and the other of a kind which produces 12 per cent, and mix them, and then if you take the 12 per cent and mix it with cornstarch, you have the same percentage of gluten? Mr. TELLER. If you mix the right proportions

Mr. FORDNEY. Oh, yes; but I am figuring on 50 per cent and 50 per cent.

Mr. TELLER. Yes; that would be the right proportion. I take 60 because I have the same amount of cornstarch in wheat flour.

Mr. FORDNEY. Then in the cornstarch there is as much gluten as in the 8 per cent soft wheat flour?

Mr. TELLER. No, sir: there is as much in the resultant mixture as if I had mixed half-and-half of the 8 per cent and 12 per cent flour. The cornstarch contains little if any, but the result of that mixture gives the same amount, which is 10 per cent.

Mr. FORDNEY. I do not understand that. You say you take a 12 per cent flour, 50 per cent, and 50 per cent from the 8 per cent gluten wheat?

Mr. TELLER. Yes, sir.

Mr. FORDNEY. And mix them?

Mr. TELLER. And you have a gluten content in the resultant of 10 per cent.

Mr. FORDNEY. In the 100 per cent?

Mr. TELLER. In the 100 per cent.

Mr. FORDNEY. Now, if you take 50 per cent or say 100 pounds of the high per cent wheat and mix it with 50 per cent of cornstarch

Mr. TELLER. No; I said 100 pounds of the wheat flour and 20 pounds of cornstarch, which would make 20 per cent, as I take it. Fr. FORDNEY. You have to have a larger quantity? Mr. TELLER. Yes; I have to have a larger quantity. Now, that is a fair example of what we might find in ordinary years, in the year before and the year before that, to get the 10 per cent gluten.

Mr. FORDNEY. If by the repeal of this law or any other method the miller is permitted to make cornstarch 50 per cent and wheat flour 50 per cent, the consumer of bread has got to eat more pounds of that sort of a mixture in order to get the same gluten content than he would have to eat of a mixture of two flours?

Mr. TELLER. I doubt very much whether a mixture of that kind would be made by the miller for ordinary bread purposes, because the proportion of starch would be too large to get the best results.

Mr. FORDNEY. Whatever the proportion, it reduces the gluten in the 100 pounds of mixture, does it not?

Mr. TELLER. Very slightly; but replaces it with material which is entirely essential and which we get in large quantities in soft wheat flour from the soft-wheat districts which constitutes more than onehalf of the wheat in the United States.

Mr. FORDNEY. The human system would get the quantity of starch out of the wheat flour?

Mr. TELLER. That would depend on the other foods entirely.
Mr. LANNEN. Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question?

The CHAIRMAN. If there is no objection by the committee, ask the question.

Mr. LANNEN. Prof. Teller, is it not a fact that the higher the gluten in a wheat flour the lower the starch content?

Mr. TELLER. That is always what takes place.

Mr. LANNEN. If the amount of moisture remains constant, the lower the gluten content the higher the starch content?

Mr. TELLER. That is quite true.

Mr. LANNEN. Now, if you take a high gluten-content flour and add starch to it and bring it down to about 10 per cent gluten, is that or is that not a flour from a chemical standpoint?

Mr. TELLER. It certainly is flour, to the best of my knowledge.