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The fermentation of flour by means of brewer's or distiller's yeast
produces, if rightly managed, results far more palatable and
wholesome. The only requisites for success in it are, first, good
materials, and, second, great care in a few small things. There are
certain low-priced or damaged kinds of flour which can never by any
kind of domestic chemistry be made into good bread; and to those
persons whose stomachs forbid them to eat gummy, glutinous paste,
under the name of bread, there is no economy in buying these poor
brands, even at half the price of good flour.

But good flour and good yeast being supposed, with a temperature
favorable to the development of fermentation, the whole success of the
process depends on the thorough diffusion of the proper proportion
of yeast through the whole mass, and on stopping the subsequent
fermentation at the precise and fortunate point. The true housewife
makes her bread the sovereign of her kitchen,--its behests must be
attended to in all critical points and moments, no matter what else
be postponed. She who attends to her bread when she has done this,
and arranged that, and performed the other, very often finds that the
forces of nature will not wait for her. The snowy mass, perfectly
mixed, kneaded with care and strength, rises in its beautiful
perfection till the moment comes for fixing the air-cells by
baking. A few minutes now, and the acetous fermentation will begin,
and the whole result be spoiled. Many bread-makers pass in utter
carelessness over this sacred and mysterious boundary. Their oven has
cake in it, or they are skimming jelly, or attending to some other
of the so-called higher branches of cookery, while the bread is
quickly passing into the acetous stage. At last, when they are ready
to attend to it, they find that it has been going its own way,--it is
so sour that the pungent smell is plainly perceptible. Now the
saleratus-bottle is handed down, and a quantity of the dissolved
alkali mixed with the paste,--an expedient sometimes making itself
too manifest by greenish streaks or small acrid spots in the bread. As
the result, we have a beautiful article spoiled,--bread without
sweetness, if not absolutely sour.

In the view of many, lightness is the only property required in this
article. The delicate, refined sweetness which exists in carefully
kneaded bread, baked just before it passes to the extreme point of
fermentation, is something of which they ha