For five common-sized loaves, make a pint and a half of thin water gruel. Use half a teacupful of fine Indian meal. Salt it a little more than if it were to be eaten as gruel, and boil ten or fifteen minutes. This is of importance, as, if the meal is only scalded, the bread will be coarser Add enough milk to make two quarts of the whole. If the milk is new, the gruel may be poured into it in the pan; if not, it should be scalded in the kettle with the gruel. This is particularly important in the summer, as at that season milk which is but a few hours old, and is sweet when put into the bread, will sour in the dough in a short time. When the mixture is cool, so that you are sure it will not scald, add a teacupful of yeast, and then stir in sifted flour * enough to make a thick batter. This is called a sponge. This being done in the evening, let it stand, if in summer, in a cool place, if in winter, in a moderately warm place, till morning. Then add flour enough to make it easy to mould, and knead it very thoroughly.

This process of kneading is very important in making bread, and there are but few domestics whom it is not necessary to instruct how to do it. They generally work over the dough without expending any strength upon it. The hands should be closely shut, and the fists pressed hard and quickly upon the dough, dipping them into flour whenever the dough sticks to them. A half an hour is the least time to be given to kneading a baking of bread, unless you prefer, after having done this till it ceases to stick to your hands, to chop it with a chopping-knife four or five hundred strokes. An hour's kneading is not too much.

* All kinds of flour and meal should be sifted for use, except buckwheat and Graham flour.

All this looks on paper like a long and troublesome process; but I venture to say that no lady, after having learned the benefit of it, will be willing to diminish any portion of the labor and attention necessary to secure such bread as these directions, observed, will make. Practice will make it easy, and no woman of sense will hesitate in choosing between sour, tough, ill-baked bread, with heaps of wasted pieces, a dyspeptic husband, and sickly children on the one hand, and comfort, economy, and health on the other.

But to return to the bread. After it is thoroughly kneaded, divide it into four or five equal pieces, and mould according to the form of the pans in which you bake it. These being greased with clean drippings, put in the dough and set it in the sun or near the fire (according to the season) to rise. Loaves of this size will bake in an hour; if the oven be rather hot, in a few minutes short of an hour. Practice and good judgment must direct these things. If the bread rises rather slowly, take a dish of warm water and wet the top with your hand.

When the loaves are baked, do not lay them flat upon the table; good housewives think it makes them heavy. Set them on the side, one against another, and put a coarse cloth closely over them; this makes the crust tender by keeping in the steam. If bread is baked too hard, wring a towel in cold water and wrap around it while it is yet hot. Care is necessary that bread does not rise too much, and thus become sour, especially in warm weather; and even if it does not, the freshness is lost, and an insipid taste is produced, and it becomes dry sooner by long rising. No exact rule can be given; experience and observation must teach. When dough becomes so light as to run over after being moulded and put into pans, it is best to mould it again, kneading it hard two or three minutes, but using as little flour as possible; then lay it back into the pans, and put it immediately into the oven; this prevents its being tasteless and dry; it will be perfectly light, but of a different sort, and much preferred by some persons.

Some people invariably use saleratus in bread, and there are tables where the effluvia of this article, and the deep yellow color of the bread, offend the senses before it is tasted. If all the materials used are good, and the dough has not been permitted to sour, white bread except that which is made with water, is far better without saleratus. If dough has become sour, a teaspoonful of saleratus for every quart of the milk or water that was used for wetting the bread, will be sufficient to correct it. The tray or pan in which the bread is made, should be scalded after being washed, every time it is used, except in cold weather. It is not good economy to buy skimmed milk, as some persons do, for making bread. It renders it tough and indigestible, if used in the ordinary way. In case it is used for this purpose, it should be boiled, and thickened with a little Indian meal in the same way, and the same proportions as directed for making gruel, in the receipt for Good Family Bread. Use no water with it.