BREAD. 
69 
soda, or other acid or alkali, into my bread. It would 
seem that I made it according to the recipe which 
Marcus Porcius Cato gave about two centuries before 
Christ. “ Panem depsticium sic facito. Manus morta- 
riumque bene lavato. Farinam in mortarium indito, 
aquae paulatim addito, subigitoque pulchre. Ubi bene 
subegeris, defingito, coquitoque sub testu.” Which I 
take to mean—“ Make kneaded bread thus. Wash your 
hands and trough well. Put the meal into the trough, 
add water gradually, and knead it thoroughly. When 
you have kneaded it well, mould it, and bake it under a 
cover,” that is, in a baking-kettle. Not a word about 
leaven. But I did not always use this staff of life. At 
one time, owing to the emptiness of my purse, I saw 
none of it for more than a month. 
Every New Englander might easily raise all his 
own breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn, and 
not depend on distant and fluctuating markets for 
them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and inde¬ 
pendence that, in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is 
rarely sold in the shops, and hominy and corn in a still 
coarser form are hardly used by any. For the most 
part the farmer gives to his cattle and hogs the grain of 
his own producing, and buys flour, which is at least no 
more wholesome, at a greater cost, at the store. I saw 
that I could easily raise my bushel or two of rye and 
Indian corn, for the former will grow on the poorest 
land, and the latter does not require the best, and 
grind them in a hand-mill, and so do without rice and 
pork; and if I must have some concentrated sweet, I 
found by experiment that I could make a very good 
molasses either of pumpkins or beets, and I knew that 
I needed only to set out a few maples to obtain it more 
