the art of preparing bread, or reducing No. 39.

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 bouted, 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 Ampthill, 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 fleady 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 throw 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 throw 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 shake 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