a quantity of "fire
bricks," and it was arranged that we should pay for the labor of
constructing a three-peck oven. This occasioned on our part an outlay
of $10, and this small sum was the source of considerable saving to us
yearly.

We were more fortunate with our bread than with our butter-making, for
Mary was a capital baker; our bread was always made from the best
flour. We all liked it much better than bakers' bread, and it was much
more nourishing. Indeed, when I was once in Kent during "hopping," and
saw that the women who resided in the neighborhood always gave up half
a day's work weekly for the purpose of going home to bake, I used to
wonder why they did not purchase their bread from a baker in the
village. I was informed by one of them to whom I put the question,
"Lord, ma'am, we could not work on bakers' bread, we should be
half-starved; it's got no _heart_ in it."

To a small family, perhaps, the saving might not be considered an
object, but any one who has for a few months been accustomed to eat
home-made bread, would be sorry to have recourse to the baker's; the
loaves purchased are usually spongy the first day, and dry and harsh
the second. It is not only that other ingredients than flour, yeast,
and water are mixed in the dough, but it is seldom sufficiently baked;
bread well made at home and baked in a brick oven for a proper time,
is as good at the end of a week as it is the second day.

I have heard several persons say, "I should like home-made bread if it
were baked every day, but I don't like eating stale bread four or five
days out of the seven." If they stayed with us a day or two, they
became convinced that bread which had been made three or four days did
not deserve the epithet of "stale."

I will now proceed to show the reader how much flour was consumed in
our household, consisting of thirteen persons.

We used to bake weekly twenty-eight pounds of flour, of the best
quality; this produced _forty-two_ pounds of bread. I will give in the
most explicit manner I can directions for making it, which I imagine
any servant will be able to comprehend:

Place in a large pan twenty-eight pounds of flour; make a hole with
the hand in the centre of it like a large basin, into which strain a
pint of yeast from the brewer's; this must be tasted, and if too
bitter a little flour sprinkled in it, and then strained directly;
then pour in two quarts of water, of the temperature of 100', that is,
what