BAKING, the art of reducing meal or flour of any kind, or any other substance, into bread. This art, simple and necessary as it may appear, does not seem to have been discovered till a late period in the history of mankind. The earlier nations knew no other use of their meal than to make of it a kind of porridge. Such was the food of the Roman soldiers for several centuries, or at most their skill proceeded. no farther than to knead unleavened dough into bis cuits or cakes. Even at present there arc many countries where the luxury of bread is unknown. To bake it properly requires many precautions, and a degree of skill which can only be gained by consider able practice.
It is owing, perhaps, to this circumstance, that those who first began to pursue baking as a profes sion, have, in their several nations, been held in very high respect. At Rome, into which regular bakers.
seem to have been introduced from Greece, about the year of the city 583, they were so much esteemed as to be occasionally admitted into the senate. To preserve them more upright and honourable, they were expressly forbidden to associate with gladiators or comedians; and to enable them to devote their whole time to their proper business, they were ex empted from guardianships and other offices to which the rest of the citizens were liable. To the foreign bakers who first practised this art in Rome, a num ber of freedmen were added, forming together an in corporation, or college, from which neither themselves nor their descendants were allowed to withdraw. Even their effects were held in common, and no part of them could be alienated. Each bake-house was under the superintendance of a patron, and one of the patrons was annually elected to preside over the rest, and take charge of the general concerns of the college. By the statutes of England, too, bakers are considered as superior to the general order of handicrafts. " No man," says the 22 Henry VIII, cap. 13. " for using the mysteries or sciences of ba
king, brewing, surveying, or writing, shall be inter preted a_ handicraft." In London, and indeed in most of the towns throughout the kingdom, they are under the jurisdiction of the magistrates, who regulate the price of bread,"and have the power of fining those who do not conform to their rules. The two kinds of bread made in London are distinguished by the _names of white, or wheaten, and household, which differ only in their degrees of purity. Every baker is liable to a penalty if he does not mark his loaves, according to their different qualities, with the letters IV or H.
The ingredients of bread are flour, yeast, water, and salt, which are mixed according to the follow ing process : To a peck of flour are added a hand ful of salt, a pint of yeast, and three quarts of wa ter, which in hot ;veather must be cold, in winter hot, and in temperate weather lukewarm. The oven must be heated more than an hour before the bread is introduced, which must remain there three hours to be properly baked. The peck-loaf, whether house hold or wheaten, must weigh seventeen pounds six ounces avoirdupois, and smaller bread in the same proportion. Every sack of flour must weigh two hundred weight and a half; and from this there should be made, at an average, twenty peck loaves, or eighty common quartern loaves. Formerly if the bread was deficient only one ounce in thirty-six, the baker was liable to the pillory ; and the same offence is now punished by a fine imposed at the will of the magis trates, provided it be not more than five shillings, nor less than one for every ounce wanting. Suspected bread, however, must be weighed before a magistrate within twenty-four hours atter being baked ; as its weight diminishes the longer it is kept. For further particulars concerning bread, and the substitutes used for it in various nations, see BREAD. (p.)