In the following pages I have enumerated the methods by which all the different kinds of farinaceous substances are made into good and wholesome bread, and are used in different countries as articles of daily sustenance. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Art of making Bread. ------- HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE ART OF MAKING BREAD. Nothing appears so easy at first sight, as to grind corn, or other farinaceous substances, to knead the flour with water into dough, and to convert it, by baking, into porous bread. But, simple as these operations may now appear to us, the art of making loaf-bread was by no means one of the earliest among human inventions. For, however essential this species of food may be considered among us as an article of primary subsistence, it is perfectly certain, that men had long existed in a state of civilization, before bread was known among them. It is evident that every species of corn must have been originally the spontaneous production of the earth; but as the grain, previous to cultivation, would grow but scantily, its importance as food might long escape observation, and mankind would naturally derive a more obvious, though less nutritive subsistence, from acorns, berries, and other fruits which were within their reach. Ages elapsed ere Ceres, according to the Grecian mythology, descended from heaven to teach mankind the use of agriculture. In the early ages of society, according to some historians, men were satisfied with parching their corn for immediate use as food. The next advance appears to have been, to pulverize the grain in a mortar or handmill, and to form it, by the addition of water or milk, into a kind of porridge; or to make the bruised grain into dough, which was rendered eatable by baking on embers. Even after the method of grinding corn into meal, and separating the bran by sifting, had become known, it was long before the art of fermenting the dough, in order to produce bread full of eyes and of a soft consistence, was discovered. Like most other operations of primary importance, the origin of the art of making bread is lost in the darkness of ages past. We are, however, certain that the Jews practised this art in the time of Moses; for we find in the Book of Exodus, chap. xii. v. 18, a prohibition to make use of _leavened_, that is, fermented bread, during the celebration of the Passover. But it does not appear that _loaf-bread_ was known to Abraham, for in his history we read frequently of cakes, but not of fermented bread. It is, therefore, very probable, that the art of making fermented bread took its rise in the East, and that the Jews learned it from the Egyptians. The Greeks attribute the art of making bread to the god Pan.