| derable practice. 
314 BAKING OF BREAD. 
abundant are the testimonies which have been 
registered at the gallows of her devoted victims 
trained up to these pursuits.” The drift of this 
invective, and of the whole sermon in which it 
occurs, was to put an end to an annual bull-bait- 
ing at Wokingham, in Berkshire, which some 
monied savage had bequeathed property, in 
1661, to establish and maintain.—Daniel’s Rural 
Sports. 
BAKING OF BREAD. The art of reducing meal 
or flour of any kind, or any other substance, into 
bread. This art, simple and necessary as it may 
appear, does not seem to have been discovered till 
a late period in the history of mankind. The ear- 
lier nations knew no other use of their meal than 
to make of it a kind of porridge. Such was the 
food of the Roman soldiers for several centuries, 
or at most their skill proceeded no farther than 
to knead unleavened dough into biscuits or cakes. 
| Even at present there are many countries where 
the luxury of bread is unknown. To bake bread 
properly requires many precautions, and a de- 
gree of skill which can only be gained by consi- 
It is owing, perhaps, to this 
circumstance, that those who first began to pur- 
_ sue baking as a profession, have, in their several 
_ nations, been held in very high respect. 
At 
Rome—into which regular bakers seem to have 
been introduced from Greece, about the year of 
the city 583—they were so much esteemed as to 
be occasionally admitted into the senate. To 
preserve them more upright and honourable, 
they were expressly forbidden to associate with 
gladiators or comedians; and to enable them to 
devote their whole time to their proper business, 
they were exempted from guardianships and 
| other offices to which the rest of the citizens 
were liable. To the foreign bakers who first 
practised this art in Rome, a number of freedmen 
were added, forming together an incorporation, 
or college, from which neither themselves nor 
their descendants were allowed to withdraw : 
even their effects were held in common, and no 
part of them could be alienated. Each bake- 
house was.under the superintendence of a pa- 
tron, and one of the patrons was annually elected 
to preside over the rest, and take charge of the 
general concerns of the college. By the statutes 
of England, too, bakers are considered as superior 
to the general order of handicrafts. “ No man,” 
says the 22° Henry VIIL, cap. 13, “for using the 
mysteries or sciences of baking, brewing, survey- 
ing, or writing, shall be interpreted a handicraft.” 
In London, and indeed in most of the towns 
throughout the kingdom, they are under the 
jurisdiction of the magistrates, who regulate 
the price of bread, and have the power of fining 
those who do not conform to their rules. The 
two kinds of bread made in London are distin- 
guished by the names of white, or wheaten, and 
household, which differ only in their degrees of 
| purity. The ingredients of bread are flour, yeast, 
water, and salt, which are mixed according to 
BALANCE. 
the following process:—To a peck of flour are 
added a handful of salt, a pint of yeast, and three 
quarts of water, which in hot weather must be 
cold, in winter hot, and in temperate weather 
lukewarm. ‘The oven must be heated more than 
an hour before the bread is introduced, which 
must remain there three hours to be properly 
baked. For further particulars concerning bread, 
and the substitutes used for it in various nations, 
see article Brean. 
BAKING OF LAND. The forming of a hard 
skin or crust on the surface of adhesive, tena- 
cious, and finely pulverulent soils. The skinning 
or baking is, in some instances, gradual and uni- 
form, and, in others, sudden and merely occa- 
sional. When it is gradual and uniform, it re- 
sults from the excessively argillaceous nature of 
the soil, which always prevents in a greater or 
lesser degree the necessary aeration of the soil, and 
can be prevented, or even tolerably well corrected, 
only by altering the mechanical condition of the 
soil by the intermixture of sand, lime, or other 
arenaceous or calcareous substances. When it is 
sudden and merely occasional, it occurs in dry, 
strong, loamy soil, soon after sowing, or before 
the soil has had time to settle, and in conse- 
quence of first a fall of rain and next a play of 
sunshine ; and it frequently, to the great damage 
of the crop, prevents the plumules or young stems 
of the corn-plants from coming up; but is usually 
prevented by the practice of rolling after sow- 
ing,—a practice which so consolidates the soil as 
to render sudden wetting and drying by succes- 
sive rain and sunshine impossible. Land which 
is subject to being baked, and which cannot con- 
veniently be improved, ought to be sown, as often 
as a judicious rotation will permit, with winter 
wheat or vetches. 
BALANCE. The name of a simple machine 
for ascertaining the weight of any body, or for | 
finding a quantity of any substance equal to a | 
The balance has generally been | 
given weight. 
arranged among the mechanical powers, but it is 
evidently only a particular species of the lever in 
which the two arms are equal, and in which 
there will be an equilibrium when the power and 
weight are equal. The balance consists of a hori- 
zontal beam, which turns round an axis or cen- 
tre of motion exactly in the middle of the beam. 
The two halves of the beam, on each side of ‘the | 
axis, are called the arms of the balance. From 
the two extremities of the beam, called the points 
of suspension, are hung two scales, in one of which 
is placed the substance to be weighed, and in the 
other are placed weights of a known magnitude. 
The equality of the weights in the two scales, or 
the perfect equilibrium of the balance, is known 
from the horizontal position of the beam. In the 
common balance, where the whole machine is 
suspended from the axis of motion, a slender arm, 
called the tongue of the balance, rises perpen- 
dicularly from the centre of the beam, and points 
to a particular part of the handle by which the 
