fat for shortening, and I produce real "down South" biscuits. I change that flour into a soft winter-wheat flour. Of course, I know how to make it. I know all about that. I had to teach the cook how to do that. Mr. LANNEN. Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question? The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Mr. LANNEN. Doctor, would the housewife know how to mix flours? Would she know the gluten content of the flour to which she was adding the starch? Would she be equipped with the chemical-laboratory devices to test it? Mr. GREEN. I think that question answers itself. But is this starch sold at a high price simply because it is sold in small packages? Dr. WESENER. You will have to ask Dr. Wagner about that. That is out of my domain. I could answer the question, but my answer would not be based upon facts, and I know nothing about the reason. I will say this, that I do not think that this blending could be done by the "haus frau," and especially, as Giv. Lind says, not by those people who can not read nor write. If they can not read nor write, they can not weigh nor determine the gluten in the flour and find out how much cornstarch to add to the flour. Of course, it can be done much better in bulk; and as long as it is labeled as it is under this new bill it looks to me as if the consumer and the miller and everybody is getting satisfaction. I think there is no question about it. Mr. MOORE. So far as the housewife is concerned, is there any woman in the land who takes care of her own kitchen who does not know how to use cornstarch according to the directions on the label? Dr. WESENER. I could not answer that; but all the women I know would know. Mr. MOORE. I asked that question because this is an old article in our house, and I think almost any woman would be competent to use it, provided she knows how many spoonfuls to use. She is as competent to handle that as any chemist. Dr. WESENER. Yes; but if she has the proper flour she does not want to add anything to it. You can not improve on that. Mr. MOORE. It can be used for lemon pie or for delicate cake, according to the label, and it tells how much of this cornstarch to use. I am quite sure that that is common knowledge. Dr. WESENER. Yes; but that would not do to be used with a soft flour; it might make your result too soft and that would make too short a crust and too short a dough. That would have to be borne in mind. Mr. MOORE. Here is the recipe for iced mountain cake. Any woman who picked this up would know instantly how much to use. It says two cups of sugar, two-thirds of a cup of butter, the whites of seven eggs, two cups of sweet milk, two cups of flour-now, there we have got the flour. Dr. WESENER. Yes. Mr. MOORE. A woman does not need the assistance of a chemist for that purpose. Dr. WESENER. Not to make that particular dish; I think not. Mr. MOORE. There you are. The housewife knows how to use that. She has been using it for a great many years. 25718-16- -9 Mr. LIND. Doctor, you spoke about wheat flour containing sulphuric acid. Dr. WESENER. I did not say sulphuric acid. I said it contained free acid. Mr. LIND. You said acid in connection with the mention of sulphuric acid. Dr. WESENER. Lactic acid. Mr. LIND. It is a very mild acid, lactic acid Dr. WESENER. There are other acids besides acid phosphates. Mr. LIND (continuing). Otherwise, the wheat would not grow, you know. Now, have you made any analyses lately of cornstarch mixtures by your process? Dr. WESENER. Well, yes; but not very many, because as I say that question does not come up any more, because a man can mix, under this old law, as much cornstarch, up to 49 per cent, with labeling the percentage. Mr. LIND. You have not found any cornstarch in flour in the last 20 years? Dr. WESENER. I do not know Mr. LIND. Unless it was so marked? Dr. WESENER. I have had samples sent to me for examination. Mr. LIND. This is what I wish to ask you. Supposing the cornstarch kernel is shattered or broken, would it be amenable to your process? Dr. WESENER. No. But how many would you find shattered? you that. Dr. WESENER. But I do not think that answers the question, because I know how much it takes to shatter them, and I know what muscle it takes, and what fine instruments you have to have, and what force you have to use. You do not break them by the milling process; I will say that. Mr. LIND. No: but what is your answer to my question? Dr. WESENER. What is the question? The question was read by the stenographer, as follows: Mr. LIND. This is what I wish to ask you. Supposing the cornstarch kernel is shattered or broken, would it be amenable to your process? Dr. WESENER. It would not. Mr. LIND. That is all. The CHAIRMAN. Is there anything else? Mr. SLOAN. Why would it not be amenable to your process? Dr. WESENER. Because this depends upon what I have termed the staining process, and if the cell was broken we would not have the same conditions as to taking up the chemicals. Mr. SLOAN. Practically, how would that affect your process? Dr. WESENER. It would not affect it at all, because the broken cells are so minor, so insignificant, that there is no use talking about it. I tried to break up some cells, and I rubbed the stuff up in a mortar with a pestle, and I tried to see if I could change the fluidity of the starch by rupturing the cells, and in an hour I ruptured only 25 per cent. A miller does not want to do that. He does not want to produce soluble starch; he wants to produce insoluble starch. Mr. LIND. Your answer suggests another question. The cooking of starchy foods is for the purpose of breaking up the starch kernels? Dr. WESENER. Oh, yes; it has to be. As long as it is not broken up it is not food. Mr. GREEN. As I understand you, you still say, taking this mixed flour as it comes from the mill, you could make a quantitative analysis of it? Dr. WESENER. Yes. Mr. LIND. But not if the starch kernels were broken? Dr. WESENER. No; but that is an impossibility. Such a thing could not exist. There is one more word I should like to say as to the blending of such flours; that is, flours with cornstarch or corn flour. In the year 1914 there was not a good crop of wheat in the Southeastern States. Those millers were up against it in producing their biscuit flour. They got flours from other parts of the country-very strong flours. They were not adapted to biscuits. Some millers even went as far west as California to buy that soft, starchy wheat and mix it in with their products to get their biscuit flour. If they had used cornstarch or corn flour they would have been able to mix that with their strong flour from the Northwest and winter wheat and make a very nice biscuit flour that would have given every satisfaction to their trade. On the other hand, the flours of the northwest had a tough and harsh gluten; a lot of complaints. from the trade that the flours were too tough to handle by the regular bread formulae. Now, what was it they needed? It was more water or more yeast and a longer fermentation period to soften them down. There was another time when there was too much gluten. If you have too much gluten in a flour, it is muscle bound; it is tough. The gluten in the flour is the framework in making the bread. Mr. SLOAN. You spoke about the relative strength of gluten and other constituents of wheat in north and northwest Kansas and Nebraska. What are the relative strengths of that hard wheat that we have and the soft wheat which they have farther north? Dr. WESENER. The Kansas wheats are right up to the grade of the best hard wheats that are grown in this country. In fact, they are equal to them in gluten strength, and so on, and there is hardly any difference. We, at least, can not find any difference in the flour. I remember one time there was a ruling down East about 8 or 9 or 10 years ago, when bids were made on flour for eastern markets, which stated in the specifications that such flour shall be made of No. 1 northern wheat and shall not combine any Durum, any Oklahoma, Turkey Red, or Yellow Belly wheat, and they asked us if we could help them out on enforcing such a specification with our analysis, and we wrote back and told them no, and we did not know of anybody else that could; but we knew what a good standard northern hard-wheat flour was, and that was all that they should be interested in; it did not make any difference whether it was made of No. 1 Northern or Turkey Red or Yellow Belly as long as they got good bread. Mr. SLOAN. Talking about the mixing of this cornstarch with wheat, the northern soft wheat or the hard wheat which we have in Kansas and Nebraska, which would permit of the heaviest charging with this cornstarch and still make leavened bread? 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 |