In winter this is the surer method of insuring good light, sweet bread. The best yeast is coy when the thermometer runs low, and the "best family flour " has then moods and variations of tenses.

Potato sponge is made by boiling and mashing potatoes (say four potatoes if you mean to use three quarts of flour) and working into them while hot a tablespoonful of butter, or of cot-tolene, and the same quantity of sugar. Stir until smooth, thinning with three cups of lukewarm water. Beat into this two cupfuls (a pint) of sifted flour, and lastly, four tablespoonfuls of yeast, or half of a yeast-cake which has been dissolved in warm water. Throw a cloth over the sponge, or if your bread-bowl has a perforated cover, put that on, and set to rise four hours in summer, six hours, or overnight, in winter. In summer, add a little soda to the sponge.

When ready for use the sponge should be light and the surface rough with air-bubbles. Have ready a dry, clean bread-tray or bowl, sift two quarts and a pint of flour into it with a tablespoonful of fine salt. Make a deep hollow in the middle and pour into this the sponge. Work down the flour into it with a spoon as long as you can use it easily, then flour your hands and plunge them in.

Mix the dough as soft as it can be handled with any degree of comfort. Stiff dough does not rise readily, and stiff bread is unpleasant to sight, teeth, taste, and stomach. Rinse out the bowl in which the sponge was set with warm water, and add this to the dough if too stiff. When you can manage it, begin to knead. Scrape away all the dough from the sides or bottom of the tray or bowl, sprinkling flour beneath to prevent re-attachment. Make a ball of the dough and knead it with your fists and the balls of the palms, always toward the middle of the ball, but turning and tossing this that the kneading may reach every part. Fifteen or twenty minutes should give you an elastic mass, that rebounds from a blow, and fills up the holes made by your finger the instant it is withdrawn. Form the dough into a round, firm ball in the bottom of the bowl, sprinkle flour over the top, put on the perforated cover, or throw a cloth over the bowl, and set in a moderately warm place out of possible draughts, to rise. It should swell to double the original bulk in four hours in summer - perhaps sooner. In winter give it half as long again. For the second kneading use a pastry-board. Flour it evenly all over, take out the risen dough when you have coated your hands, and toss it upon the board. Knead rapidly and vigorously for ten minutes. It will be easier work this time, since the elastic dough responds readily to your treatment, seeming to rise under your very eyes. Make it into as many loaves as you desire, and set for the final rising in single pans, well-greased, or mould into oblong rolls and set several, close together, in one large pan. Cover with a light cloth and let the loaves rise for one hour longer. Each loaf should double its size, so do not fill the pans more than half-full.

Now comes what is really the crucial test of good bread-making—to wit, the baking. Ovens have tempers of their own, contingent upon fire, wind, and weather, and sometimes, as many a grievously tormented cook will aver, "upon just nothing at all but natural contrariness." Study your range and calculate shrewdly upon its disposition, its "tricks and its manners," before you undertake to bake a batch of bread. Brains and patience carry the day with the most perverse conditions.

Have an even fire. To replenish the grate while the bread is "in" is downright ruin. It is almost as bad to begin baking with a low fire and allow it to come up very rapidly. Put a tablespoonful of flour upon a tin plate and set it at the back of the oven before putting in your loaves. Should it be lightly colored in five or six minutes, put in the bread. When it has risen to the edge of the pan - a fact you must ascertain by furtive peeps, holding the door open a little way and closing quickly - cover with brown or white paper of light weight. Never use printed paper. This will prevent the premature formation of a hard crust which would effectually check a further rise, and leave heavy streaks in the loaf. Fifteen minutes before drawing the bread from the oven, uncover and brown. One hour should suffice for a loaf containing a quart of flour.

Reverse the pan upon a clean cloth, and prop the loaves deftly upon one edge that the air may get at all sides. When quite cold, put into the bread-box and cover with a thin cloth. This same bread-box or crock should be scalded and sunned before the new baking goes into it.

These are the fundamental rules for mixing, kneading, and baking bread. Once mastered, they make comparatively easy the various processes of making fancy breads, biscuits, etc.