The best flour is worthless without good yeast. Yeast made up in the morning ought to be fit for use at night. It should be foamy and frothy, with a scent slightly like ammonia. After closely following the directions for yeast-making, given in the subsequent pages, the bread will be apt to succeed, if the flour employed is good. There is a great art in mixing bread, and it is necessary to observe a certain rotation in the process. To make a small quantity of bread, first sift one quart of flour; into that sift a teaspoonful of salt, next rub in an Irish potato, boiled and mashed fine, then add a piece of lard the size of a walnut, and next a half teacup of yeast in which three teaspoonfuls of white sugar have been stirred. (Under no circumstances use soda or saleratus in your light dough.) Then make into a soft dough with cold water in summer, and lukewarm in winter. Knead without intermission for half an hour, _by the clock_. Otherwise five minutes appear to be a half hour when bread is being kneaded or beaten. Then place it in a stone crock, greased with lard at the bottom, and set it to rise. In summer, apply no artificial heat to it, but set it in a cool place. As bread rises much more quickly in summer than in winter, you must make allowance for this difference, during the respective seasons. The whole process, including both the first and second rising, may be accomplished in seven or eight hours in summer, though this will be regulated partly by the flour, as some kinds of flour rise much more quickly than others. In summer you may make it up at nine o'clock P.M., for an eight o'clock breakfast next morning, but in winter, make it up at seven P.M., and then set it on a shelf under which a lighted coal-oil lamp is placed. If you can have a three-cornered shelf of slate or sheet-iron, placed in a corner of the kitchen, just above the bread block, it will be all the better, though a common wooden shelf, made very thin, will answer, where you cannot get the other. The coal-oil lamp underneath without running the risk of burning the shelf (if wooden), will keep the bread gently heated all night, and will answer the double purpose of keeping a light burning, which most persons like to do at night, and which they can do with scarcely any expense, by using a coal-oil lamp.