The English bread-book : for domestic use, adapted to families of every grade: containing the plainest and most minute instructions to the learner; practical receipts for many varieties of bread; with notices of the present system of adulteration, and its consequences; and of the improved baking processes and institutions established abroad / by Eliza Acton.

  • Eliza Acton
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The English bread-book : for domestic use, adapted to families of every grade: containing the plainest and most minute instructions to the learner; practical receipts for many varieties of bread; with notices of the present system of adulteration, and its consequences; and of the improved baking processes and institutions established abroad / by Eliza Acton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    But, besides this, pray think a little of the ingre- dients of which the baker’s loaf is composed, — the alum, the ground potatoes, and other materials. 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. Even supposing their bread to be as good as yours in quality, you have, allowing four-pence for salt and a shilling for heat- ing the oven [both these expences would not now (1856) amount, at the utmost, to more than eight or nine-pence, seldom to more than six-pence], a clear four shillings saved upon every bushel of bread. If you consume half a bushel a week, this is a saving of five pounds four shillings a year, full a sixth part, if not a fifth, of the earnings of a labourer in husbandry. How wasteful then, and indeed how shameful, for a labourer’s wife to go to the baker’s shop; and how negligent, how criminally careless of the welfare of his family must the labourer be, who permits so scandalous * a use of the proceeds of * Mr. Cobbett, in his wish to impress forcibly on the minds of his readers the facts he set forth, is sometimes rather more vehement in his expressions than the occasion seems alto- gether to demand. It is improvident and imprudent of the labourer to send to the bread-shop; but he has not always a free choice in the matter.