Making bread by rule. Bakers. Domestics. Sour bread. An anecdote. Mrs. Van Winkle. Bad bread need not be made. How cake is made. Bread-making a drudgery. Excellent example of a mother. Eating bad bread. Importance of having good bread. 103–126 VARIETIES OF BREAD. Rye bread. Indian meal bread. Use of sour milk or butter-milk. Acids. Family grinding. 127–131 PREFACE. There are probably few people in civilized life, who—were the question put to them directly—would not say, that they consider bread _one_ of the most, if not the most important article of diet which enters into the food of man. And yet there is, in reality, almost a total and universal carelessness about the character of bread. Thousands in civic life will, for years, and perhaps as long as they live, eat the most miserable trash that can be imagined, in the form of bread, and never seem to think that they can possibly have anything better, nor even that it is an evil to eat such vile stuff as they do. And if there is occasionally an individual who is troubled with some convictions that his bread is not quite what it should be, he knows not how to remedy the difficulty; for it is a serious truth, that, although nearly every human being in civilized life eats bread of some kind or other, yet scarcely any one has sufficient knowledge of the true principles and processes concerned in bread-making, and of the actual causes of the bad qualities of bread, to know how, with any degree of certainty, to avoid bad and secure good bread. I have thought, therefore, that I could hardly do society a better service, than to publish the following treatise on a subject which, whether people are aware of it or not, is, in reality, of very great importance to the health and comfort of every one. It has been prepared for the press with more haste, under more embarrassments from other engagements, and with less severity of revision, than I could wish. Yet, whatever may be its defects of arrangement, method or style, I have taken care to have the principles correct, and the instructions such as, if attended to, will enable every one who is heartily devoted to the object, to make good bread. I must, however, acknowledge, that I have very little expectation that proper attention will be paid to this subject, so long as the dietetic habits of society continue to be what they are. While the various preparations of animal food constitute so important a portion of human aliment, the quality of bread will be greatly disregarded and neglected, and people will continue almost universally to be cursed with poor bread.