Cottage economy : containing information relative to the brewing of beer, making of bread, keeping of cows, pigs, bees, ewes, goats, poultry and rabbits, and relative to other matters deemed useful in the conducting of the affairs of a labourer's family / by William Cobbett.
- William Cobbett
- Date:
- 1822
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Cottage economy : containing information relative to the brewing of beer, making of bread, keeping of cows, pigs, bees, ewes, goats, poultry and rabbits, and relative to other matters deemed useful in the conducting of the affairs of a labourer's family / by William Cobbett. 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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![have, allowing a shilling for the heating of the oven, a clear 4s. saved upon every bushel of bread. If you consume half a bushel a week, that is to say, about a quartern loaf a day, this is a saving of 5/. 4s. a year, or full a sixth part, if not a fifth part of the earnings of a labourer in husbandry. 82. How wasteful, then, and, indeed, how shame- ful, 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 per- mits so scandalous an use of the proceeds of his labour! But I have, hitherto, taken a view of the matter the least possibly advantageous to the home-baked bread. For, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the fuel for heating the oven costs very little. The hedgers, the copsers, the woodmen of all descriptions, have fuel for little or nothing. At any rate, to heat the oven cannot, upon an average, take the Country through, cost the labourer more than 6d. a bushel. Then, again, fine flour need not ever be used, and ought not to be used. This adds six pounds of bread to the bushel, or nearly another quartern loaf and a half, making nearly fifteen quartern loaves out of the bushel of wheat. The finest flour is by no means the most wholesome ; and, at any rate, there is more ' nutritious matter in a pound of household bread, than in a pound of baker’s bread. Besides this, rye, and even barley, especially when mixed with wheat, make very good bread. Few people upon the face of the earth live better than the Long Islanders. Yet,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21527489_0067.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
