BREAD. 157 



the French government prohibited tlie use of yeast in making 

 bread, under a severe penalty, in consequence of tlie repre- 

 sentation of a college of physicians, who declared it to be 

 injurious to health. But the superiority of yeast bread' soon 

 became apparent; the decisions of the medical faculty were 

 forgotten ; the laws were allowed to sink into oblivion, and 

 the new mode of making bread soon found its way to other' 

 countries. The primitive mode of making bread is still pre- 

 served among the Arabs of the desert, who, as Niebuhr informs 

 us, " lay cakes of dough in the coals, covering them with 

 ashes till they are done, when they eat them warm." In the 

 northern counties of England, in Scotland, and in Wales, 

 unfermented bread is mostly used among the poorer classes. 

 In Scotland it is baked in thin cakes, dried hard on racks, 

 and kept for months. Not having been used to saleratus in 

 their bread, the people there are able to operate on these cakes 

 with their teeth, which the inhabitants of some localities we 

 know would not be able to do. 



Unfermented bread may be flakey, but it is never porous or 

 spongy. As a general rule, it is not so wholesome, not being so 

 digestible as fermented bread ; but we believe, notwithstanding 

 this, it would be better than the tough, clammy, sour, alkaline 

 stuff which some people call fermented bread — and it is certainly 

 time that every female, in our country at least, should know 

 how to make good fermented bread ; and we know no easier 

 way to impart this knowledge and scatter it broadcast among 

 the people, than for our society to offer premiums, require a 

 statement, have them published ; then those that run may read, 

 and those that read may know how to make good bread. Then 

 again, our society may become popular by these same exhibitions 

 of bread. 



Some of the loaves offered for our inspection were very 

 beautiful, and were made by an unmarried lady. Before we 

 had finished our examination a young gentleman praised the 

 bread very much, and said he would certainly visit the lady 

 before he went home. Now, if this visit should result in mar- 

 riage, or if any exhibition of bread hereafter should have such 

 results, and nothing can be more probable, we may feel that 

 where a man gets a good wife, or vice versa, they would be 

 decided friends of the society. 



Edmund Smith, Cliairvian. 



