The general belief that numerous ingredients and much hard labor are necessary for successful bread- making has no foundation in fact. Bread-making, when the principles are understood, is one of the easiest of culinary processes ; and the only ingredients needed for bread of the choicest quality are flour, yeast, milk, water, and salt. Women will use salt rising, dry yeast cakes, potato balls, yeast foam, and innumerable other ferments to lighten their dough, and supplement them with grease, sugar, alum, vinegar, charcoal, and almost every other conceivable thing, and invariably have bad bread. Yet it seems never to occur to them to use only the proper ingredients. Why do people take such infinite pains to make bad bread? Why, in this enlightened age of the world, should any person of ordinary sense want salt rising, dried yeast cakes, 182 Bread- Making. 183 potato balls, or any false or putrefactive ferments in bread-making, when compressed yeast or pure home- made yeast is so readily obtainable, and is so superior in all respects for the purpose? Or why should any intelligent person put aught else into dough than flour, yeast, milk, water, and salt, when these ingredients alone produce the very best of bread ? In the good old times of which we are so frequently reminded by pessimistic croakers, wheat with a year's accumulation of dirt clinging to it was emptied from a dirty sack into a dirty hopper, crushed by dirty stones into dirty flour, and then mixed with a dirty ferment into grandmother's bread. Was there not, under such conditions, a basis of truth for the then prevalent belief that it was the allotted task of each member of the family to eat his or her peck of dirt ? But those con- ditions have passed away. Through the agency of an improved method of milling, each grain of wheat is carefully brushed free of dirt and furze before it passes under the polished steel or porcelain rollers to be con- verted into flour, and by the aid of science pure yeast is made expressly for family use. Should not such an advance in preparing flour and yeast be followed by a similar advance in making bread ? The flour and yeast of to-day are far superior to the flour and yeast used by our grandmothers. Why should not the bread made to-day be far superior to the bread made by our grand- mothers ? The flour and yeast furnished by American men to-day are unequaled anywhere in excellence. Why shouldn't the bread made by American women to-day be the best bread in the world ? 184 The Art of Cookery.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

The general belief that numerous ingredients and much hard labor are necessary for successful breadmaking has no foundation in fact. Bread-making, when the principles are understood, is one of the easiest of culinary processes ; and the only ingredients needed for bread of the choicest quality are flour, yeast, milk, water, and salt. Women will use salt rising, dry yeast cakes, potato balls, yeast foam, and innumerable other ferments to lighten their dough, and supplement them with grease, sugar, alum, vinegar, charcoal, and almost every other conceivable thing, and invariably have bad bread. Yet it seems never to occur to them to use only the proper ingredients. Why do people take such infinite pains to make bad bread? Why, in this enlightened age of the world, should any person of ordinary sense want salt rising, dried yeast cakes, Bread- Making. 183 potato balls, or any false or putrefactive ferments in bread-making, when compressed yeast or pure homemade yeast is so readily obtainable, and is so superior in all respects for the purpose? Or why should any intelligent person put aught else into dough than flour, yeast, milk, water, and salt, when these ingredients alone produce the very best of bread ? In the good old times of which we are so frequently reminded by pessimistic croakers, wheat with a year's accumulation of dirt clinging to it was emptied from a dirty sack into a dirty hopper, crushed by dirty stones into dirty flour, and then mixed with a dirty ferment into grandmother's bread. Was there not, under such conditions, a basis of truth for the then prevalent belief that it was the allotted task of each member of the family to eat his or her peck of dirt ? But those conditions have passed away. Through the agency of an improved method of milling, each grain of wheat is carefully brushed free of dirt and furze before it passes under the polished steel or porcelain rollers to be converted into flour, and by the aid of science pure yeast is made expressly for family use. Should not such an advance in preparing flour and yeast be followed by a similar advance in making bread ? The flour and yeast of to-day are far superior to the flour and yeast used by our grandmothers. Why should not the bread made to-day be far superior to the bread made by our grandmothers ? The flour and yeast furnished by American men to-day are unequaled anywhere in excellence. Why shouldn't the bread made by American women to-day be the best bread in the world ? 184 The Art of Cookery.

The art of cookery