We have now got the loaf made, and the next thing is to bake it; for the home-baked loaf, the oven of a kitchener or gas stove will do very well, and the heat should be about 400 deg. Fahr. A baker’s oven is a thing _per se_. For hundreds of years they were made on the same old pattern, but now, except in many of the small underground bakeries, they are scientifically built, fitted with pyrometers, and with internal lamps. Mr. Austin writes thus of the oven: ‘The baker’s oven is generally a brick oven, heated thoroughly with coal or wood according to construction; if made for coal, the damper will be on the one side and the furnace on the other, so that the flames play all round the oven; if constructed for wood, it must be heated with a good solid heat, with wood burnt in the interior of the oven, and then well cleaned out with a scuffle. As to the degrees of heat of the oven the laborious explanations and number of them may be reduced to three—viz., sharp or “flash,” as named in recipes; the second degree, moderate or “solid,” as used for large or solid articles, as wedding cakes, &c.; then slack or cool. ‘The baker’s old-fashioned method of testing the temperature of his oven is instructive. He throws flour on the floor. If it blackens without taking fire the heat is sufficient. It might be supposed that this is too high a temperature, as the object is to cook the bread, not to burn it; but we must remember that the flour which has been prepared for baking is mixed with water, and the evaporation of this water will materially lower the temperature of the dough itself. Besides this, we must bear in mind that another object is to be attained. A hard shell or crust has been formed, which will so encase and support the lump of dough as to prevent it from subsiding when the further evolution, carbonic gas, shall cease, which will be the case some time before the cooking of the mass is completed. It will happen when the temperature reaches the point at which the yeast cells can no longer germinate, when the temperature is below the boiling point of water.