Making Bread from Sawdust.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVII, Issue 13, 27 March 1912, Page 16

Making Bread from Sawdust.

Sawdust mar not appeal to the palate as a digestible or appetising Biibstitute for flour in the making of bread, but all the same there is a large bakery in Berlin turning out 20,090 loaves of sawdust bread daily.

The sawdust is first subjected to a process of fermentation and various chemical manipulations. Finally it is mixed with one-third part of rye flour, formed into loaves, and linked in ovens like any other bread.

Although this new “pain de l«>is." as the French call it, is meant for consumption by horses only, claim is made by the manufacturers that in case of fam ine it would furnish a nutritious and highly satisfactory food for human beings. Sawdust bread may not taste so bad as it sounds. In various parts of the world bread is obtained from trees. For example in the Molucca Islands the starchy pith of the sago palm furnishes a white floury meal, which is made into flat, oblong loaves and baked in curious little ovens divided into small oblong cells just big enough to receive the loaves.

In Lapland the inner bark of pine trees, well ground and mixed with oat flour, is made into cakes which ar? cooked in a pan over the fire. Tn Kamchatka pine bark and birch bark are used for bread without the addition of any other substance, being reduced to powder l»v pounding, made into loaves, and baked. Along the Columbia River bread is made from a kind of moss that grows on a species of fir trees. After being dried it is sprinkled with waler, allowed to ferment, rolled into balls as big as a man's head, and baked in pita, with the help of hot atones. Travellers who have tasted it say that it is by no means unpalatable.

The Californian Indiana collect the pollen of cattails in large quantities by

beating it off the plants and catching It in blankets. They make bread of it. But as a delicacy they prefer bread of grasshopper flour.