the art of preparing bread, or reducing meals of any kind, whether simple or compound, into bread.

The various forms of baking among us may be reduced into two, the one for leavened, the other for unleavened bread; for the first, the chief is manchet-baking, the proceeds whereof is as follows.

The meal, ground and bolted, is put into a trough, and to every bushel are poured in about three pints of warm ale, with barm and salt to season it: this is kneaded well together with the hands through the brake; or for want thereof, with the feet, through a cloth; after which, having lain an hour to swell, it is moulded into manchets, which scorched in the middle, and pricked at top, to give room to rise, are baked in the oven by a gentle fire.

For the second, sometimes called cheat-bread baking, it is thus: some leaven (saved from a former batch) filled with salt, laid up to four, and at length dissolved in water, is strained through a cloth into a hole made in the middle of the heap of meal in the trough; then it is worked with some of the flour into a moderate consistence; this is covered up with meal, where it lies all night, and in the morning the whole heap is stirred up, and mixed with a little warm water, barm, and salt, by which it is seasoned, softened, and brought to an even leaven: it is then kneaded, moulded, and baked, as before.

Baking of porcelain. See Porcelain.