Note 43 — Adulteration of Bread.

The sack of marketable flour is by law obliged to weigh 240 pounds, which is the produce of five bushels of wheat, and is upon an average supposed to make eighty quartern loaves of bread; and consequently sixteen of such loaves are made from each bushel of good wheat. It is admitted, however, that two or three loaves more than the above quantity can be made from the sack of flour, when it is the genuine produce of good wheat; that is, in the proportion of about sixteen and a half loaves from each bushel of sound grain, and, it may be presumed, sixteen from a bushel of medium corn. The expense, in London, of making the sack of flour into bread, and disposing of it, is about nine shillings.

A bushel of wheat, upon an average, weighs sixty-one pounds; when ground, the meal weighs 60-3/4 lbs.; which, on being dressed, produces 46-3/4 lbs. of flour, of the sort called seconds; which alone is used for the making of bread in London and throughout the greater part of this country; and of pollard and bran 12-3/4 lbs., which quantity, when bolted, produces 3 lbs. of fine flour, this, when sifted, produces in good second flour 1-1/4 lb.