Interesting 1880 German Baking Book
Chemie der menschlichen Nahrungs- und Genussmittel, Volume 2 is a German book available on Google Books, has anyone tried to translate this book? I only read moderate German so it takes me a long time to decipher some sentences. I want to translate this book with the help of others because this book seems to have really good info.
Foe example, I was trying to make a king cake with natural food dyes, but I didn't know how to produce a purple color, well this book lists methods used by other cultures:
Red: cochineal, beets, madder juice, cherries
Blue: Indigo solution
Purple: Blue+Red
Yellow: saffron, safflower, tumeric, marigold, yellow berries/grapes (Avignon, Persian)
Green: Spinach juice
Black: Chinese Ink
Elsewhere.
I found some interesting entries though:
Das Kriegsbrot - 60 parts rye flour, 30 parts white flour, 10 parts corn flour
Paderbornerbrot 2700 kg rye flour, 100 kg white flour, 2 kg buckwheat, 1 liter oil, 6 kg salt, 6 kg sourdough
In the land of Serbia a dough is formed with corn flour and water, covered with cabbage leaves, and is
either baked with hot ashes or placed in a large dutch oven.
Baking bread should to take place quickly with too high a temperature and should not take place for a long time with too low a temperature. In the former case the water and gases leave the bread too soon and you are left with a burnt crust. In the latter case, too much water and gas escape and you will have a very dense bread .
Das Backen soll ferner nicht zu rasch bei einer zu hohen Temperatur aber auch nicht zu langsam bei einer zu niedrigen Temperatur erfolgen In ersterem Falle werden das Wasser und die Gase zu schnell ausgetrieben das Brot platzt und erhält eine brenzliche Kruste im letzteren Falle entweicht zu viel Wasser und Gas aus dem Innern des Brotes man erhält ein sehr dichtes Brot
Hi Michael
A quick Google for this book revealed that online copies were available at various websites. Here's a link to one:
https://archive.org/stream/chemiedermenschl02knig/chemiedermenschl02knig_djvu.txt
From there you can cut and paste into Google translate.
There are PDF and Kindle versions here also
GL