It is well known that so far as actual nutritive power goes, both oats and barley, to say nothing of maize, rye, the millets, and rice, contain as much (oats, indeed, more) valuable material for the maintenance of the human body as wheat does; that is to say, they all contain certain proportions of starch, protein, or the nutritive ingredient, represented by oily or fatty matter, besides sundry saline particles. All these are indispensable to the building up of the human body. Why then do we find wheat more cultivated and used in greater quantities by all the civilized nations than any of the other cereals ? The only reason can be that wheaten flour alone, of all these farinaceous foods, will make fermented bread.

I used at one time to think that bread-making must be the very simplest thing in the world, but when I came to be face to face with flour and yeast I found it was not so easy a matter to produce light good bread. These pages are not written therefore for the instruction of bakers or those fortunate people who have learned, at an age and under circumstances when learning is easy, how to make bread, but with the hope that they may prove ever so slight a practical help to those who are as profoundly ignorant as I was, not so long ago.

First of all the yeast has to be thought of. When near a town this thorn in the path of the anxious bread-maker is removed by the facility with which brewer's or ready-prepared baker's yeast can be procured. Brewer's yeast is simply the scum which rises to the top of the malt during the process of fermentation, and is of no use to the beer, or wort. The brewer is therefore glad to dispose of it, and the baker takes it off his hands. But he does not put it raw into his bread. A special ferment is first obtained from mealy potatoes, by boiling them in water, mashing them, and allowing them to cool to a temperature of about 8o° of Fahrenheit. Yeast is then added to them, and in a few hours they will get into a state of active fermentation with a sort of cauliflower head. Water should now be gently poured into this mixture, and it must be strained, after which a very little flour should be lightly sprinkled into it. In five or six hours the whole will rise to a fine sponge, when more water must be added, and a little salt, and then the yeast is fit to use. It may now be bottled, but it is not advisable to make a great deal at a time. On account of the fermentation, yeast-bottles can only be kept from bursting by plugging their mouths with soft paper or cotton-wool. If neither the fresh yeast from the brewers (which will not keep by itself for more than a day or two) or the dried yeast, which keeps a long time, can be obtained, then it will be necessary to boil some dried nops in a very little water, put some sugar to them, and add this compound when in a state of fermentation to the mashed potatoes instead of the brewer's yeast.

Having procured or made the yeast, the next thing is to put the flour in a large tin milk-pan, make a hole in the centre of the soft white heap, and pour in a small cupful of yeast mixed with a large cupful of warm water. A little of the flour is stirred in to this liquid so as to make it rather more of a paste, and then the whole is covered with a clean cloth and set to work during the whole night. Great care must be taken not to put it in too hot a place, as it will become dry and crusty in the morning, and make heavy, tasteless bread. On the other hand, if the temperature be too low, the flour will be dull and cold, the mixture will not have penetrated it, and the bread will not rise. But, supposing that the happy medium has been hit, and that the gas contained in the yeast has made its subtle way among the flour, then more water must be added by degrees and a very little salt. The whole mass should then be lightly kneaded by very clean hands, and when it has attained a certain elastic consistency it should be quickly cut into separate portions, dropped into well-floured tins (only half fill them with the dough), which must instantly be placed in the oven. The oven should be fairly hot to begin with, and its heat increased until the end. From time to time a clean knife should be thrust into the loaf ; if it comes out with a tarnish on the bright blade, as though it had been breathed upon, then the bread is not sufficiently baked, and there is no use in taking it out of the oven until the knife can be readily drawn out with a perfectly undimmed surface. The real art of bread-making consists in the dough not being too stiff at first to resist the entrance of the gas, nor too soft to permit the gas to pass through it quickly. It should also be sufficiently kneaded so that the gas may become well distributed throughout the mass, yet not over-kneaded, in which case a good deal of it will have escaped, and the bread will consequently be heavy.

The difference between biscuits and bread is that there is no yeast in the composition of the former; they are also for the most part unleavened and very highly dried. Though valuable as a temporary substitute for bread, they can never be so wholesome from the absence of the water which is absorbed in the process of drying or baking. Biscuits should invariably be taken with ever so small a quantity of liquid, for by themselves they either absorb too much fluid from the juices of the stomach, and so produce indigestion, or they fail to obtain as much fluid as they require from those sources, and therefore remain a long time undigested. Cakes are made by the substitution of soda or carbonic acid for yeast, and the addition of sugar, fat, and eggs. Of all these materials the sugar is the wholesomest and should be the most freely used. The other ingredients are more difficult of digestion.

Before leaving the subject of bread, it will be as well to notice the extraordinary difference between batches of bread. It is no reason because a household receives excellent bread one week - either from the baker's shop or its own kitchen - that the next week's baking will not be heavy and bad. This is because we trust so entirely to the good old rule of thumb in our kitchens, scorning to make the temperature of the oven a certainty by means of a thermometer. Half, and more than half, of the hard baking and the over or under boiling and frying with which we are afflicted arises from the extraordinary prejudice which exists against the daily use of this indispensable little instrument. It is the only reliable way of making sure of the oven, or the water, or the fat being of exactly the right temperature; and yet what cook who "respects herself" would at present deign to use a thermometer, still less even a charming little contrivance which has been invented specially for her use, and is called a frimometer ?

But to touch upon some of the other uses of flour. We are apt to look upon macaroni as a luxury for the tables of the rich, when it is really so low in price that it is within the reach of those who have any choice at all as to what they shall eat. It is considered a foreign composition, unworthy to take a place among the more solid flesh-formers dear to the heart of the Englishman ; but if he understood what it is made from, he might perhaps modify his contempt for one of the most nourishing and wholesome forms in which he can eat wheaten flour. Macaroni, then, is made by the simplest imaginable process, and there is no reason in the world why its manufacture should not be carried on in England, as indeed it is. The finest wheaten flour is made into a peculiar smooth paste or dough, and afterwards driven through a cylinder which cuts it into ribands or tubes. Wheaten flour contains, of course, precisely the same amount of nourishment, whether it be made into bread or into the pasta from which macaroni is cut; but whereas bread can scarcely be cooked again (except as toast), there are many ways in which macaroni can be dressed so as to form a delicious food. Simply boiled with milk and a little sugar it would be a wholesome and agreeable change in children's diet, and we must remember that for children who are born with soft bones - that is, with too little phosphate of lime in their bones - a diet of wheat will tend, more than anything else, to form this deposit. When I say wheat, I include macaroni therefore, and semolina, which is the very small grain left after grinding wheat in a coarse mill. Such a mode of grinding gives but a small proportion of flour, and a certain larger residue of coarse flour or fine grains, and these grains are known as "semolina." They are chiefly obtained from the most nourishing of all the wheats, the red-grained wheat grown in Southern Europe, and especially in the Danubian Principalities.