THE BAKER.

The business of the baker consists in making bread, rolls, and biscuits, and in baking various kinds of provisions.

Man, who appears to be designed by nature to eat of all substances that are capable of nourishing him, and still more of the vegetable than the animal kind, has, from the earliest times, used farinaceous grains as his principal food ; but as these grains cannot be eaten in their natural state without difficulty, means have been contrived for extracting the farinceous part, and of preparing it so as to render it a pleasant and wholesome aliment.

Those who are accustomed to enjoy all the advantages of the finest human inventions, [ without reflecting on the labours it has cost to complete them, think all the operations common and trivial; and it is not to be won dered that, to such, there should appear nothing more easy than to grind corn, to make it into paste, and to bake it in an oven. It is however certain that, for a long time,
men did not otherwise prepare their corn than by boiling it in water, and forming viscous cakes, which was neither agreeable to the
taste, not easy of digestion. To make good bread, it was necessarv to construct machines for grinding and separating the pure flour
with little labour and trouble ; and inquiries, or perhaps accident, of which some observing person availed himself, discovered that flour, when mixed with a certain quantity of water, and moderately heated, would ferment, by which its viscidity might be nearly destroyed, and bread might be made more pleasant to the taste, and easy of digestion.

No great care was taken in ancient times to bake bread : the hearth of the fire was commonly used for the purpose. This method is
still adopted by the poor and lower class of farmers, in many parts of England. The ancients laid upon the hearth a piece of flattened dough, and covered it with hot ashes, under which it remained until it was sufficiently baked. In England, at the present time, an iron pot is inverted over the loaf intended to be baked, and placed upon the hot hearth, and hot ashes are. placed around and upon the pot. The inveution of ovens is, however, very ancient. They are spoken of in the time of Abraham. Some writers give the honour of their discovery to a person named Annus, an Egyptian, but who is wholly unknown in history. There is, however, reason to believe that the ovens of the ancients were very different from ours; being, as far as we may judge of them, made of a kind of earthen pan, which could be easily carried from one place to another : indeed, this mode of baking still subsists in the East.

It is not known when this veiy useful business first became a particular profession Bakers were a distinct body of people in Rome,
nearly two hundred years before the Christian era and it is supposed that they came from Greece. To these were added a number of freemen, who were incorporated into a college, from which neither they nor their children were allowed to withdraw. They held their effects in common, without enjoying any power of parting with them. Each bake-house had a patron, who bad the superintendency of it; and one of the patrons had the management of the others, and the care of the college. a pint of yeast^nd three quarts ot water, cold in summer, hot in winter, and temperate between the two. The whole being kneaded, as is represented in the plate, will rise in about an hour; it is then moulded, into loaves, and put into the oven to bake.

The oven takes more than an hour to heat properly : the time of baking is regulated by the quality of the flour, of the dough, hard
dough requiring more time than soft, and by the bigness and form of the loaves. Half an fiour is sufficient for soft and spongy loaves of one pound weight, when there is no milk in them, because water evaporates quicker than milk. A loaf of twelve pounds should remain about three hours in the oven; of eight pounds, two hours; of six pounds, one hour; of three pounds, fifty minutes; of two pounds, three quarters of an hour ; one pound and a half, thirty-five minutes; of one pound, half an hour. In gneral, the more surface the loaves have, the sooner they are baked, whence it arises that small loaves remain a less time in the oven, in proportion to their form and weight, than large ones.

Most bakers make and sell rolls in the morning ; these are either common, or French rolls : the former differ but little from loaf-bread : the ingredients of the latter are mixed with milk instead of water, and the finest flour is made use of for them. Rolls require only about twenty minutes for baking.

The life of the baker is very laborious; the greater part of the work being done by night : the journeyman is required always to commence his operations about eleven o'clock in the evening, in order to get the new bread ready for admitting the roll in the morning. His wages are, however, but very moderate, seldom amounting to more than ten shillings a week, exclusive of his board.

The price of bread is regulated according to the price of wheat ; and bakers are directed in this by the magistrates whose rates they are bound to follow. By these the peck-loaf of each sort of bread must weigh seventeen pounds six ounces avoirdupoise weight and smaller loaves in the same proportion. Every sack of flour is to weigh two hundred and a half (i.e.280lbs) and from this there ought to made, at an average, twenty such peck loaves or eighty common quartern loaves.

If bread were short in its weight only one ounce in thirty-six, the baker formerly was liable to be put in the pillory; and for the same offence be may now be fined, at the will of the magistrate, in any sum not less than one shilling, nor more than five shillings for every
ounce wantiug ; such bread being complained of, and weighed in the presence of the magistrate, within twenty-four hours after it is
baked, because bread loses in weight by keeping.

The process of biscuit-baking, as practised at the Victualling Office at Deptford, is curious and interesting. The dough, which
consists of flour and water only, is worked by a large machine. It is then handed over to a second workman, who slices it with a large knife for the bakers, of whom there are five.

The first, or the moulder, forms the biscuits two at a time the second, or marker, stamps and throws them to the splitter, who separates the two pieces, and puts them under the hand of the chucker, the man that supplies the oven, whose work of throwing the bread on the peel must be so exact that he cannot look on for a moment. The fifth, or the depositer receives the biscuits on the peel, and arranges them in the oven. All the men work with the greatest exactness, and are, in truths like parts of the same machine. The business is to deposit in the oven seventy biscuits in a minute ; and this is accomplished with the regularity of a clock, the clacking of the peel .operating like the motion of the pendulum. Theere are twelve ovens at Deptford, and each will furnish daily bread for 2040 men.

It is said that scxarecelly any nation lives without bread, or something as a substitute for it. In Lapland, where there is no corn, a
kind of cake is made of dried fishes, and the inner bark of the pine ; this mixture would lead us to suppose that they did not expect
nourishment from it, bin only a dry substance which should be eaten, and would distend the stomach and bowels. The Norwegians make a bread that will keep thirty or forty years ; and the inhabitants esteem old and stale bread far beyond that which is new ; so much so, that particular care is taken to have the oldest bread at their great feasts. It frequently happens at the christening of a child, that their guests axe supplied with bread which has been baked at the birth of a father, or even grandfather. This bread is said to be made of barley and oats, and baked between two hollow stones.