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HOUSHKEEPER'S BOOK.
plaster of Paris. Or, after having dipped the fore-finger and
thumb partially in sweet oil, take up a small quantity of
flour: if it be pure, you may freely rub the fingers together
for any length of time; it will not become sticky, and the
substance will turn nearly black; but if whiting be mixed
with the flour, a few times rubbing turns it into putty; but
its colour is very little changed.
                     MAKING BREAD.
  Process of setting the sponge.-Put twenty-four pounds
of flour into an oblong wooden baking-trough, or a glazed
earthen pan, large enough to contain twice the quantity
of the flour employed.  Make a deep round hole in the
centre of the flour, and pour into it the diluted yeast; stir
into it with a large spoon so much of the surrounding meal
as will make it up into a sort of batter of the consistence of
thin paste: this process is called "setting the sponge."
Cover the mixture with dry flour to the depth of at least
the eighth of an inch, and then throw over the trough or
pan a linen or woollen cloth. Many persons omit this use-
ful preparatory process, but the bakers always adopt it: the
object is to give strength and character to the ferment by
communicating the quality of leaven to a small portion
of the flour; a quality which then is soon extended to the
whole mass: chemists term the action so excited, the panary
fermentation, in contradistinction to that which yeast gives
to the wortof malt, &c. &c. Setting sponge is also a measure
of wise precaution; for many a batch of flour, which would
have been totally ruined for bread, had the barm been foul
or inert, and mixed up, at first, with the entire bulk of flour,
has been saved by this test of the goodness of the yeast.
   Forming the dough.-After the sponge has stood some
time, it will be found to have swelled considerably, and
formed cracks in the covering of flour: when these cease to
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