278 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[August 1. 
Brown Goss, the Bath Brown Goss , and the Hammer¬ 
smith Hardy cabbage lettuce. Horseradish should be 
kept clear from spurious suckers, and the earth’s surface 
about it kept open and clear. 
Mushroom Beds should be made in succession by 
collecting good stable manure. If tbe straw is very 
long some of it may be shaken out to advantage; half- 
dried cow, sheep, or deer dung are all very good for 
mushroom culture, either mixed with stable dung or 
made use of separately. Any of the above materials 
should have a sufficiency of good holding loam incor¬ 
porated with it, to prevent its heating too strongly, which 
the dung by itself is very apt to do, and thus become 
dry, and exhausted of its best properties by evaporation; 
this the soil prevents by absorption, maintaining both a 
kindly temperature and moisture, the two principles 
that are most essential for the successful culture of 
mushrooms. In making a mushroom bed the materials 
should be well trodden or rammed, in order to make it 
very firm, and spawned at a very moderate temperature, 
cased with good holding friable loam to the thickness of 
about two inches when beaten down very firm ; after it 
has been cased a week or ten days it should have 
another good even beating over, so as to make it very 
firm after setting. 
James Barnes. 
MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION. 
IIOME-BAKED BREAD. 
By the Authoress 
Bread is an article of extremely great importance in 
every household; especially where economy is rigidly re¬ 
quired. Families must be fed; and where meat is neces¬ 
sarily very sparingly used, there must be a substitute for it; 
and what can be more nourishing, more simple and agree¬ 
able, both for old and young, than sweet, wholesome bread ? 
Home-made bread is so incomparably superior to that of 
the baker, that every endeavour should be used to obtain it; 
not only is the baker’s profit gained, but home-made bread 
goes farther than an equal quantity of that which is procured 
from the shop. It is firmer and more satisfjing in its tex¬ 
ture ; the stomach remains much longer at rest after receiv¬ 
ing it, and does not feel that hollow craving sensation that 
very frequently follows the use of baker’s bread. It has 
been said, and doubtless with much reason, that many 
diseases of the stomach are engendered by the adulteration 
of food; and scarcely any article consumed by man admits 
of this wicked and injurious practice to so great an extent 
as bread. On the point of health, therefore, if not of eco¬ 
nomy, bread should, if possible, be made at home, and 
thereby one very material source of discomfort will be cut 
off; for I have myself known cases in which real illness has 
been caused by the use of baker’s bread. Very probably 
much indisposition, and general derangement of the system, 
arises from this unsuspected cause. 
In large towns it is sometimes impossible to accomplish 
baking at home. There may be no oven, and no place in 
which to erect one, and fuel may be scarce and exorbitantly 
dear. In country towns, even in villages in fact, wherever 
wood has to be bought, it is comparatively dear; but even 
supposing for a moment that household bread is not eaten 
at a cheaper rate than that supplied by the baker, it is made 
of pure flour and yeast , which is a grand consideration; and 
it goes farther also; but, generally speaking, it will be 
absolutely cheaper. 
Home-baked bread possesses this advantage, also, over 
that which is bought, that it can be eaten without distaste 
in a very stale state. Baker’s bread is almost uneatable 
when a week old, and is sometimes very unpleasant at the 
end of three days. Pure household bread is excellent when 
a fortnight old; and the thrifty cottager usually bakes a 
fortnight's batch, as it saves fuel, and bread too—the more 
stale it is, the more quickly it satisfies hunger. This plan 
should be adopted by the economist of a higher sphere. 
When means arc small, and principle is strong (which we 
know to be the case with some of our excellent correspon¬ 
dents), no taste or fancy will be allowed to interfere with 
that which we see to be right; and ■we shall soon become 
reconciled to the good stale loaf, and enjoy it with a keener 
relish than we ever did the delicate spongy bread of our 
more affluent days. We feel that we are doing what we can 
to avoid expense, and support ourselves upon the means 
which, either we have undertaken to live upon or it has 
pleased God in His infinite wisdom to grant us, and in both 
cases the conscientious mind will take pleasure in every act 
of self-denial. Tastes are sometimes very difficult to deal 
of “ My Flowers." 
with; but if we always bear in mind that a principle is 
involved in nearly every thing we do, we shall overcome 
many difficulties; and all that is to the “ natural man” 
distasteful, will be rendered easy and even pleasant by the 
holy motive on which we act. 
Ladies with small incomes cannot always procure servants 
who understand baking; they are sometimes obliged to be 
dependant upon the services of an ignorant girl, who has 
never been taught to make bread, and probably never even 
saw the process carried on. In such a case it is a very great 
advantage to be able to direct and teach this useful branch 
of household duty; and yet how many ladies enter upon 
housekeeping without knowing the way in which it is done! 
And how many may, perhaps, have kept house for years 
without having learned or observed it! In every cookery 
book we open the directions how “ to make bread ” are 
given, but so imperfectly—even in those which profess to be 
the most simple and practical—that they are no guide_ what¬ 
ever to a novice; and I, therefore, venture to subjoin the 
only plain sensible directions I ever met with, and by which 
any lady, however uninstructed herself, may teach a servant 
with ease and success. I have extracted it from a little 
work, by a writer whose practical knowledge and simple 
style, if his pen had but been guided by “ the wisdom which 
is from above,” W'ould have made him eminently useful to 
the humbler classes :— 
“ Suppose the quantity be a bushel of flour. Put this 
flour into a trough that people have for the purpose, or it 
may be in a clean smooth tub of any shape, if not too deep, 
and sufficiently large. Make a pretty deep hole in the 
middle of this heap. Take (for a bushel) a pint ot good 
fresh yeast; mix it and stir it well up in a pint of soft water, 
milk-warm. Pour this into the hole in the heap of flour. 
Then take a spoon and work it round the outside of this 
body of moisture, so as to bring into it by degrees flour 
enough to make it form a thin hatter , which you must stir 
well about for a minute or two. Then take a handful of 
flour and scatter it thinly over the head of this batter, so as 
to hide it; then cover the whole over with a cloth to keep it 
warm; and this covering, as well as the situation of the 
trough as to distance from the fire, must depend upon the 
nature of the place, and the state of the weather as to heat 
and cold. When you perceive that the batter has risen enough 
to make cracks in the flour you covered it with, you begin to 
form the whole mass into dough, thus : you begin round the 
hole containing the batter, w T orking the flour into the batter, 
and pouring in, as it is wanted, to make the flour mix with 
the batter, soft water, milk-warm. Before you begin this 
you scatter the salt over the heap, at the rate of half a pound 
to a bushel of flour. When you have got the whole sufficiently 
moist, you knead it well. This is a grand part of the busi¬ 
ness ; for unless the dough be well worked there will be little 
round lumps of flour in the loaves; and besides, the original 
batter, which is to give fermentation to the whole, will not 
be duly mixed. The dough must, therefore, be well worked. 
The fists must go heartily into it—it must be rolled over. 
