rom water and potatoes: and, therefore, I shall now proceed to
offer some observations to the cottager, calculated to induce him to bake
his own bread.

81. As I have before stated, sixty pounds of wheat, that is to say, where
the Winchester bushel weighs sixty pounds, will make sixty-five pounds of
bread, besides the leaving of about ten pounds of bran. This is household
bread, made of flour from which the bran only is taken. If you make fine
flour, you take out pollard, as they call it, as well as bran, and then
you have a smaller quantity of bread and a greater quantity of offal; but,
even of this finer bread, bread equal in fineness to the baker's bread,
you get from _fifty-eight to fifty-nine_ pounds out of the bushel of
wheat. Now, then, let us see how many quartern loaves you get out of the
bushel of wheat, supposing it to be fine flour, in the first place. You
get thirteen quartern loaves and a half; these cost you, at the present
average price of wheat (seven and sixpence a bushel,) in the first place
7_s_. 6_d._;[5] then 3_d._ for yeast; then not more than 3_d._ for
grinding; because you have about thirteen pounds of offal, which is worth
more than a 1/2_d._ a pound, while the grinding is 9_d._ a bushel. Thus,
then, the bushel of bread of fifty-nine pounds costs you _eight
shillings_; and it yields you the weight of thirteen and a half quartern
loaves: these quartern loaves _now_ (Dec. 1821) sell at Kensington, at the
baker's shop, at 1_s._ 1/2_d._; that is to say, the thirteen quartern
loaves and a half cost 14_s._ 7-1/2_d._ I omitted to mention the salt,
which would cost you 4_d._ more. So that, here is 6_s._ 3-1/2_d._ saved
upon the baking of a bushel of bread. The baker's quartern loaf is indeed
cheaper in the country than at Kensington, by, probably, a penny in the
loaf; which would still, however, leave a saving of 5_s._ upon the bushel
of bread. But, besides this, pray think a little of the materials of which
the baker's loaf is composed. The _alum_, the _ground potatoes_, and other
materials; it being a notorious fact, that the bakers, in London at least,
have _mills_ wherein to grind their potatoes; so large is the scale upon
which they use that material. It is probable, that, out of a bushel of
wheat, they make between _sixty_ and _seventy_ pounds of bread, though
they have no more _flour_, and, of course, no more nutritious matter, than
you have in your fifty-nine pounds of bread. But, at the least, s