Fragments of unfermented bread were discovered in the Swiss
    lake-dwellings, which belong to the Neolithic age.

Fermented bread is seldom seen in Northern Europe and Asia except among the rich or the nobility.  At one time, the captain of an English vessel requested a baker of Gottenburg to bake a large quantity of loaves of raised bread.  The baker refused to undertake an order of such magnitude, saying it would be quite impossible to dispose of so much, until the captain agreed to take and pay for it all.

I made a study of the ancient and indispensable art of bread-making, consulting such authorities as offered, going back to the primitive days and first invention of the unleavened kind, and traveling gradually down in my studies through that accidental souring of the dough which it is supposed taught the leavening process, and through the various fermentations thereafter till I came to “good, sweet, wholesome bread,”—­the staff of life.  Leaven, which some deemed the soul of bread, the spiritus which fills its cellular tissues, which is religiously preserved like the vestal fire,—­some precious bottleful, I suppose, brought over in the Mayflower, did the business for America, and its influence is still rising, swelling, spreading in cerulean billows over the land,—­this seed I regularly and faithfully procured from the village, until one morning I forgot the rules and scalded my yeast; by which accident I discovered that even this was not indispensable, and I have gladly omitted it ever since.  Neither did I put any soda or other acid or alkali into my bread.  It would seem that I made it according to the recipe which Marcus Porcius Cato gave about two centuries before Christ:  “Make kneaded bread thus:  Wash your hands and trough well.  Put the meal into the trough, add water gradually, and knead it thoroughly.  When you have needed it well, mold it, and bake it under a cover,” that is in a baking kettle.—­Thoreau in Walden.

FRUITS

Of all the articles which enter the list of foods, none are more wholesome and pleasing than the fruits which nature so abundantly provides.  Their delicate hues and perfect outlines appeal to our sense of beauty, while their delicious flavors gratify our appetite.  Our markets are supplied with an almost unlimited variety of both native and tropical fruits, and it might be supposed that they would always appear upon the daily bill of fare; yet in the majority of homes this is rarely the case.  People are inclined to consider fruit, unless the product of their own gardens, a luxury too expensive for common use.  Many who use a plentiful supply, never think of placing it upon their tables, unless cooked.  Ripe fruit is a most healthful article of diet when partaken of at seasonable times; but to eat it, or any other food, between meals, is a gross breach of the requirements of good digestion.

Fruits contain from seventy-five to ninety-five per cent of water, and a meager proportion of nitrogenous matter; hence their value as nutrients, except in a few instances, is rather small; but they supply a variety of agreeable acids which refresh and give tone to the system, and their abundant and proper use does much to keep the vital machinery in good working order.