n possibly get them; they contain the best elements
of wheat. "Household Flour" has similar qualities, but is sometimes made
from inferior kinds of wheat. Both are darker and cheaper than fine
white flour; and bread made from them takes longer to "rise" than that
made from fine flour. Bakers' bread is generally made from poor flour
mixed with a little of the better sort; or with a little alum, which
added to the wheat grown in wet seasons, keeps the bread from being
pasty and poor in taste.

The prices of bakers' bread upon the streets in the eastern and western
parts of the city are as follows: ordinary white bread, five cent loaf
weighs three quarters of a pound: six cent loaf weighs fourteen ounces:
eight cent loaf weighs one pound and ten ounces; black bread, two eight
cent loaves weigh, respectively, one pound eight, and one pound ten
ounces; fine French bread, eight cent loaf weighs three quarters of a
pound; in the French quarter a six cent loaf weighs one pound. We advise
the purchase of new flour in preference to old, because, unless flour is
cooled and dried before it is packed, the combined action of heat and
dampness destroys its gluten, and turns it sour; gluten is the nutritive
part of the flour, that which makes it absorb water, and yield more
bread. If you do not have a good oven, your bread can be baked at the
baker's for about a cent a loaf. When bread is made too light it is
tasteless, and lacks nourishment, because the decay caused in the
elements of the flour used to make it by the great quantity of yeast
employed, destroys the most nutritious parts of it. A pint of milk in a
batch of four loaves of bread gives you a pound more bread of better
quality, and helps to make it moist. Scalded skim milk will go as far as
fresh whole milk, and you can use the cream for some other dish. One
pound of pea-meal, or ground split-peas, added to every fourteen pounds
of flour used for bread increases its nourishment, and helps to satisfy
hunger.

Keep your bread in a covered earthen jar; when it is too stale to eat,
or make into bread broth, dry it in a cool oven, or over the top of the
fire, roll it with a rolling-pin, sift it through a sieve, and save the
finest crumbs to roll fish or chops in for frying, and the largest for
puddings. If a whole loaf is stale put it into a tight tin can, and
either steam it, or put it into a moderately warm oven for half an hour;
it will then be as good as fresh bread to the t