Gl 



upon the hearth." There is reason to think, from some of the 

 ancient writers, that the art of fermenting bread with yeast 

 was known eighteen hundred years ago. Yet it was not com- 

 mon in Europe till within two hundred years. In 1688, the 

 French government prohibited the use of yeast in making 

 bread under a severe penalty, in consequence of the 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 in- 

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

 with ashes till they are done, Avhen 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 flaky, 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, notwith- 

 standing 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 county 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 



