To a small family, perhaps, the saving might not be considered an
object, but any one who has for a few months been accustomed to eat
home-made bread, would be sorry to have recourse to the baker's; the
loaves purchased are usually spongy the first day, and dry and harsh
the second. It is not only that other ingredients than flour, yeast,
and water are mixed in the dough, but it is seldom sufficiently baked;
bread well made at home and baked in a brick oven for a proper time,
is as good at the end of a week as it is the second day.

I have heard several persons say, "I should like home-made bread if it
were baked every day, but I don't like eating stale bread four or five
days out of the seven." If they stayed with us a day or two, they
became convinced that bread which had been made three or four days did
not deserve the epithet of "stale."

I will now proceed to show the reader how much flour was consumed in
our household, consisting of thirteen persons.

We used to bake weekly twenty-eight pounds of flour, of the best
quality; this produced _forty-two_ pounds of bread. I will give in the
most explicit manner I can directions for making it, which I imagine
any servant will be able to comprehend:

Place in a large pan twenty-eight pounds of flour; make a hole with
the hand in the centre of it like a large basin, into which strain a
pint of yeast from the brewer's; this must be tasted, and if too
bitter a little flour sprinkled in it, and then strained directly;
then pour in two quarts of water, of the temperature of 100', that is,
what is called blood-heat, and stir the flour round from the bottom of