pause before consummating a nearer acquaintance.

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