[This was written in 1821. _Now_ (1823) we have had the experience of 1822, when, for the first time, the world saw a considerable part of a people, plunged into all the horrors of _famine_, at a moment when the government of that nation declared _food to be abundant_! Yes, the year 1822 saw Ireland in this state; saw the people of whole parishes receiving the _extreme unction_ preparatory to yielding up their breath for want of food; and this while large exports of meat and flour were taking place in that country! But horrible as this was, disgraceful as it was to the name of Ireland, it was attended with this good effect: it brought out, from many members of Parliament (in their places,) and from the public in general, the acknowledgment, that the _misery_ and _degradation_ of the Irish were chiefly owing to the _use of the potatoe as the almost sole food of the people_.]
100. In my next number I shall treat of the _keeping of cows_. I have said that I will teach the cottager how to keep a cow all the year round upon the produce of a quarter of an acre, or, in other words, _forty rods_, of land; and, in my next, I will make good my promise.
101. In the last number, at Paragraph 86, I observed that I hoped it was unnecessary for me to give any directions as to the mere _act_ of making bread. But several correspondents inform me that, without these directions, a conviction of the utility of baking bread at home is of _no use to them_. Therefore, I shall here give those directions, receiving my instructions here from one, who, I thank God, does know how to perform this act.
102. Suppose the quantity be a bushel of flour. Put this flour into a _trough_ that people have for the purpose, or it may be in a clean smooth tub of any shape, if not too deep, and if sufficiently large. Make a pretty deep hole in the middle of this heap of flour. Take (for a bushel) a pint of good fresh yeast, mix it and stir it well up in a pint of _soft_ water milk-warm. Pour this into the hole in the heap of flour. Then take a spoon and work it round the outside of this body of moisture so as to bring into that body, by degrees, flour enough to make it form a _thin batter_, which you must stir about well for a minute or two. Then take a handful of flour and scatter it thinly over the head of this batter, so as to _hide_ it. Then cover the whole over with a cloth to keep it _warm_; and this covering, as well as the situation of the trough, as to distance from the fire, must depend on the nature of the place and state of the weather as to heat and cold. When you perceive that the batter has risen enough to make _cracks_ in the flour that you covered it over with, you begin to form the whole mass into _dough_, thus: you begin round the hole containing the batter, working the flour into the batter, and pouring in, as it is wanted to make the flour mix with the batter, soft water milk-warm, or milk, as hereafter to be mentioned. Before you begin this, you scatter the _salt_ over the heap at the rate of _half a pound_ to a bushel of flour. When you have got the whole _sufficiently moist_, you _knead it well_. This is a grand part of the business; for, unless the dough be _well worked_, there will be _little round lumps of flour in the loaves_; and, besides, the original batter, which is to give fermentation to the whole, will not be duly mixed. The dough must, therefore, be well worked. The _fists_ must go heartily into it. It must be rolled over; pressed out; folded up and pressed out again, until it be completely mixed, and formed into a _stiff_ and _tough dough_. This is _labour_, mind. I have never quite liked baker's bread since I saw a great heavy fellow, in a bakehouse in France, kneading bread with his _naked feet_! His feet looked very _white_, to be sure: whether they were of that colour _before he got into the trough_ I could not tell. God forbid, that I should suspect that this is ever done _in England_! It is _labour_; but, what is _exercise_ other than labour? Let a young woman bake a bushel once a week, and she will do very well without phials and gallipots.