ion, it makes it more easy of
digestion, it is true; but the loss of nutriment and of pleasure to the
true appetite more than counterbalances this. Bakers, in striving to get
a large loaf, rob the bread of most of its sweetness.

Salt is objectionable, because it hardens the bread, and renders it more
difficult of digestion. Our ancestors, in this country, did not use it
at all; and many are the families that will not use it now.

Those who use salt in bread, tell us how _flat_ it would taste without
it. This idea of flatness has two sources. 1. We have so long given our
bread the taste of salt, as we have most other things, that it seems
tasteless without it. 2. The flatness spoken of in an article of food is
oftentimes the true taste of the article, unaltered by any stimulus. If
any two articles need to be stimulated with salt, however, it is rice
and beans--bread never.

If saleratus is used in bread where no acidity is present, it is a
medicine; or, if you please, a poison both to the stomach and
intestines. If it meets and neutralizes an acid either in the bread-tray
or the stomach, the residuum is a new chemical compound diffused through
the bread, which is more or less injurious, according to its nature and
quantity.

Milk is objectionable on the score of its tendency to render the bread
more indigestible than when it was wet with water, and perhaps by
rendering it too nutritious. For good bread without the milk is already
too nutritious for health, if eaten exclusively, for a long time. That
man should not live on bread alone, is as true physically as it is
morally.

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