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

The various forms of baking among us may be reduced into two, the one for unleavened, the other for leavened bread. For the first, the chief is manchet-baking; the process 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 up 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.

Method of raising a bushel of flour, with a tea-spoonful of barm; by James Stone, of Amport, in Hampshire.—Suppose you want to bake a bushel of flour, and have but one tea-spoonful of barm. Put your flour into your kneading-trough or trendle; then take about three quarters of a pint of warm water, and take the tea-spoonful of thick steady barm and put it into the water, stir it until it is thoroughly mixed with the water: then make a hole in the middle of the flour large enough to contain two gallons of water, pour in your small quantity; then take a stick about two feet long, (which you may keep for that purpose), and stir in some of the flour, until it is as thick as you would make batter for a pudding; then strew some of the dry flour over it, and go about your usual business for about an hour; then take about a quart of warm water more, and pour in; for in one hour you will find that small quantity raised so, that it will break through the dry flour which you shook over it; and when you have poured in the quart of warm water, take your stick as before, and stir in some more flour, until it is as thick as before; then strew some more dry flour over it, and leave it for two hours more, and then you will find it rise and break through the dry flour again; then you may add three quarts or a gallon of water more, and stir in the flour and make it as thick as at first, and cover it with dry flour again; in about three or four hours more you may mix up your dough, and then cover it up warm; and in four or five hours more you may put it into the oven, and you will have as light bread as though you had put a pint of barm. It does not take above a quarter of an hour more time than the usual way of baking, for there is no time lost but that of adding water three or four times.

The author of this method assures us that he constantly bakes this way in the morning about six or seven o'clock, puts the flour out, and puts this small quantity of barm into the before-mentioned quantity of water, in an hour's time some more, in two hours more a greater quantity, about noon makes up the dough, and about six in the evening it is put into the oven, and he has always good bread, never heavy nor bitter.

When you find, he says, your body of flour spunged large enough, before you put in the rest of your water, you should, with both your hands, mix that which is spunged and the dry flour all together, and then add the remainder of warm water, and your dough will rise the better and easier.

The reason he affirms why people make heavy bread is, not because they have not barm enough, but because they do not know that barm is the same to flour as fire is to fuel; that, as a spark of fire will kindle a large body by only blowing of it up, so will a thimble-full of barm, by adding of warm water, raise or sponge any body of flour; for warm water gives fresh life to that which is before at work: so that the reason of making bread heavy is, because the body spunged is not large enough, but was made up and put into the oven before it was ripe.

In regard to the difference of seasons, he prescribes, that in the summer you should put your water blood-warm; and in winter, in cold frosty weather, as warm as you can bear your hand in it without making it smart; being sure you cover up your dough very warm in the winter, and your covering of it with dry flour every time you add warm water will keep in the heat; when you have added six or eight quarts of warm water, as before mentioned, in such a gradual way, you will find all that body of flour which is mixed with the warm water, by virtue of that one tea-spoonful of barm, brought into great agitation, waxing, or fermenting; for it is to the flour what the spirit is to the body, it soon fills it with motion.