THE “STAFF OF LIFE.”

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 684, 15 November 1921, Page 2

THE “STAFF OF LIFE.”

queer uses for bread. - + Instead of baking bread in loaves, the inhabitants of Asia Minor, Arabia, Turkestan, and the Tigris-Euphrates valley make it into sheets. These sheets are about forty inches wide and twice as long, and the | natives make almost as much use of them as the American Indian does of birch bark. If they need an awning for protection against sun or rain, they unwind a roll of this bread, and carry it back and forth over a pole several times, much as a camper puts tip a dog tent; for if it has a coat of almond oil or mutton tallow the bread is fairly water-proof. It is a comical sight, says “The Youths’ Companion,” to see a teamster or camel driver of the Levant travel placidly, through a heavy .shower with a couple of yards of bread sheeting thrown over his shoulders, and to see him tear off pieces bore and there and chew on them if lie feels hungry. The bread is made of durum wheat flour mixed with the pulp of sultana raisins, which give it a sweet taste and a slight fragrance like that of honey.

The Arab uses his sheets of bread, which look like chamois leather, for a makeshift blanket, and it is said by travellers who have tried it, that it keeps the heat in and the cold out almost as well as a real blankel. But some of-the. Russian engineers at work on the construction of tho trans-Si-berian railway did even better, for they made a paste of the bread by boiling several pieces, and then stuck together two strips of the shootings, each a metre wide by two metres long. Thus they manufactured a sleeping-hag, and a very comfortable one, too. The Turkish peasants use this flat bread for window panes, and in th© bazaars the vendors of merchandise wind up pieces as a grocer does a paper cornucopia, and use them to hold small quantities of nuts, Turkish, candies, or squares of sugar. Of course, the purchaser eats the bag with its contents. In the same shape the bread sheeting is used for holding the fruity drinks of the Bospliorous; but it will not stand hot liquors, oven when it is coated with almond oil. Thanks to the raisin pulp, the bread is of remarkable elasticity, and can be bent back and forth without cracking. It has actually been used for bookbinding.