GRAHAM SALT-RISING BREAD.—­Put two tablespoonfuls of milk into a half-pint cup, add boiling water to fill the cup half full, one half teaspoonful of sugar, one fourth teaspoonful of salt, and white flour to make a rather stiff batter.  Let it rise over night.  In the morning, when well risen, add a cup and a half of warm water, or milk scalded and cooled, and sufficient white flour to form a rather stiff batter.  Cover, and allow it again to rise.  When light, add enough sifted Graham flour to knead.  When well kneaded, shape into a loaf; allow it to become light again in the pan, and bake.  All utensils used should be first well sterilized by scalding in hot sal-soda water.

UNFERMENTED BREADS.

The earliest forms of bread were made without fermentation.  Grain was broken as fine as possible by pounding on smooth stones, made into dough with pure water, thoroughly kneaded, and baked in some convenient way.  Such was the “unleavened breads” or “Passover cakes” of the Israelites.  In many countries this bread is the only kind used.  Unleavened bread made from barley and oats is largely used by the Irish and Scotch peasantry.  In Sweden an unleavened bread is made of rye meal and water, flavored with anise seed, and baked in large, thin cakes, a foot or more in diameter.

[Illustration:  Mexican Woman Making Tortillas]

Some savage tribes subsists chiefly upon excellent corn bread, made simply of meal and water.  Unleavened bread made of corn, called tortillas, forms the staple diet of the Mexican Indians.  The corn, previously softened by soaking in lime water, is ground to a fine paste between a stone slab and roller called a metate, then patted and tossed from hand to hand until flattened into thin, wafer-like cakes, and baked over a quick fire, on a thin iron plate or a flat stone.

Unquestionably, unleavened bread, well kneaded and properly baked, is the most wholesome of all breads, but harder to masticate than that made light by fermentation, but this is an advantage; for it insures more thorough mixing with that important digestive agent, the saliva, than is usually given to more easily softened food.

[Illustration:  Stone Metate.]

What is usually termed unfermented bread, however, is prepared with flour and liquid, to which shortening—­of some kind is added, and the whole made light by the liberation of gas generated within the dough during the process of baking.  This is brought about either by mixing with the flour certain chemical substances, which, when wet and brought into contact, act upon each other so as to set free carbonic acid gas, which expands and puffs up the loaf; or by introducing into the dough some volatile substance as carbonate of ammonia, which the heat during baking will, cause to vaporize, and which in rising produces the same result.

Carbonic acid gas maybe for this purpose developed by the chemical decomposition of bicarbonate of potassa (saleratus), or bicarbonate of soda, by some acid such as sour milk, hydrochloric acid, tartaric acid, nitrate of potassa, or the acid phosphate of lime.