49 



How many of our farmers prefer rye even to wheat. Many never 

 feel that breakfast or "dinner can be complete without the good old 

 fashioned stand-by, so indispensable with pork and beans, rj-e and 

 Indian. 



To torpid, weak and inactive stomachs, not less valuable is Gra- 

 ham bread, containing as it does, all the elements of wheat in form 

 best fitted for digestion. 



Bread making as an art, ought to be ranked among thejiuc arts. 



It is eas3' to give and to folio v/ a recipe for bread-making, such a.s 

 to put together certain parts of Hour and milk and yeast and salt, 

 and to bake one hour. But who that has eaten the sunken, clammy, 

 sticky substance on the one hand, or on the other, the dry, hard, 

 sour compound, too often called bread, has not felt in his stomach 

 as well as in his soul, that there is something in a loaf of bread 

 nearly akin to a poem or a picture. 



Flour mixed with 35 to 45 per cent, of water, yeast being added, 

 and a moderate heat being kept up, rises and increases in bulk, 

 while a portion of the h<tarch is changed into sugar and alcohol and 

 carbonic acid, and actually uudei'gocs decomposition. 



By kueadiug, the dough is rendered fibrous and delicate. By 

 baking, a portion of alcohol and water is removed, and the starch 

 rendered soluble and fit for digestion. 



Thus we see that bread-making is a scientific and skillful opera- 

 tion, to be classed with the manipulations and painstaking processes 

 of the laboratory. Indeed, the good bread-maker is so far a good 

 chemist. 



There are science, and art, and fascination in bread-making, not- 

 withstanding it is so often regarded as a merely mechanical, dull, 

 and uninteresting process. We remember a young lady graduate 

 of one of the first seminaries of New England, who, before she had 

 the care of her own household, coidd see nothing to be desired in 

 the pot of yeast so precious in the eyes of an older house-keeping 

 sister. She found, a few years afterwards, beauty even in a pot of 

 yeast, and that it could be made a source of true happiness and 

 esthetic culture, no less than her painting and embroider^'. 



Taking into consideration then, that bread is so universal and 

 necessary an article of food, and that good bread only is capable of 

 building up properly and supporting the human body, and that 

 bread-making rightly considered, is a scientific process, worthy to 

 be ranked among the fine arts, also that it is possible to find occu- 



