Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches

or half an hour will be sufficient. The oven should be hot by the time the dough has remained twenty minutes in the lump. If it is a brick oven it should be heated by faggots or small light wood, allowed to remain in till burnt down into coals. When the bread is ready, clear out the coals, and sweep and wipe the floor of the oven clean. Introduce nothing wet into the oven, as it may crack the bricks when they are hot. Try the heat of the bottom by throwing in some flour; and if it scorches and burns black, do not venture to put in the bread till the oven has had time to become cooler. Put the dough on the paste-board, (which must be sprinkled with flour,) and divide it into loaves, forming them of a good shape. Place them in the oven, and close up the door, which you may open once or twice to see how the bread is going on. The loaves will bake in from two hours and a half to three hours, or more, according to their size. When the loaves are done, wrap each in a clean coarse towel, and stand them up on end to cool slowly. It is a good way to have the cloths previously made damp by sprinkling them plentifully with water, and letting them lie awhile rolled up tightly. This will make the crust of the bread less dry and hard. Bread should be kept always wrapped in a cloth, and covered from the air in a box or basket with a close lid. Unless you have other things to bake at the same time, it is not worth while to heat a brick oven for a small quantity of bread. Two or three loaves can be baked very well in a stove, (putting them into square iron pans,) or in a Dutch oven. [Footnote: If you bake bread in a Dutch oven, take off the lid when the loaf is done, and let it remain in the oven uncovered for a quarter of an