No bread should be eaten while new and hot--though the finer it is, the worse for health when thus eaten. Old bread, heated again, is less hurtful. But if eaten both new and hot, and with butter or milk, or any thing which soaks and fills it, the effect is very bad. Mrs. Howland, in her Economical Housekeeper, says much about _ripe_ bread. And I should be glad to say as much, had I room, about ripe bread, and about the true philosophy of bread and bread-making, as she has. SECTION A.--_Bread of the first order._ This is made of coarse meal--as coarse as it can well be ground, provided the kernels are all broken. The grain should be well washed, and it may be ground in the common way, or according to the oriental mode, in hand-mills. The latter mode is preferable, because you can thus have it fresh. Meal is somewhat injured by being kept long ground. If great pains is not taken to have the grain clean when ground, it needs to be passed through a coarse sieve, that all foreign bodies may be carefully separated. The hulls of corn, and especially the husks of oats and buckwheat, should also be separated in some way. In no case, however, should meal be bolted. Good health requires that we eat the innutritious and coarser parts as well as the finer. RECEIPT 1.--Take a sufficient quantity of good, recent wheat meal;[25] wet it well, but not too soft, with pure water; form it into thin cakes, and bake it as hard as the teeth will bear. Remember, however, that the saliva aids the teeth greatly, especially when you masticate your food slowly. The cakes should be very thin--the thinner the better. Many, however, prefer them an inch thick, or even more. RECEIPT 2.--Oat meal prepared in the same manner. Procure what is called the Scotch kiln dried oat meal, if you can. No matter if it is manufactured in New England, if it is well done. RECEIPT 3.--Indian meal cakes, otherwise called hoe cakes, or Johnny cakes, are next in point of value to bread made of wheat and oats. They are most healthy, however, in cold weather. RECEIPT 4.--Rye cakes come next. Warm instead of cold water is often used to wet all the above. Some even choose to scald the meal. Fancy may be indulged in this particular, only you must remember that warm water in warm weather may soon give rise, if the mass stands long, to a degree of fermentation, which, for the best bread, should be avoided. RECEIPT 5.--Barley meal bread comes next in order in the unleavened series. In regard to this species of bread, however, I do not speak from experience, but from report. RECEIPT 6.--Of millet bread I know still less. Cakes made of it, as above, must certainly be wholesome. RECEIPT 7.--Buckwheat cakes are last in the series of the best breads. The meal is always too fine, and hence makes heavy bread, except when hot. Few use it without fermentation.