HOME BAKING.
(To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR.")
fie,—The situation described by your correspondent of February 24th, Margaret F. Carr, can be much improved by baking at home. On baker's bread the rations for physical workers are not enough, and there is no margin for lour for cooking; but home. baking saves the situation. Three pounds of flour and one pound of potatoes will make five and a half pounds of bread. In my own case, now that I bake all our bread, ,the allowance is quite enough. Our household just now consists of my husband, myself, and two girls (seventeen and nineteen). We are all hard workers, and the girls are agricultural students doing man's work on a farm, and require man's rations. I eat no meat at all, so consume principally bread and oatmeal porridge. I weigh out twelve pounds of flour for each week, use about ten pounds for bread, and the rest for cooking, as really " feedy " puddings are a great help, and soup with dumplings, thickened gravies, and an occasional seed or ginger cake, all economize and make a welcome change. It is not extravagant to use the potatoes in 'bread. One pound- of potatoes is barely enough for four people for dinner, but two ounces of rice or macaroni make en excellent. substitute, and I use those things in place of potatoes twice a week. Six per cent. of rice flour (one ounce to the pound) also improves the bread, and adds considerably to the weight. Alto- gether, with care and ingenuity, I find I can bake eighteen pounds of bread easily and supply puddings, &e., and I think it should be the special mission of the women of England to make the most of available supplies. It is not so exciting as public, " work." I do not mean real workers, but the enormous number of middle-aged women who depend on servants to carry out diffi- cult economies while they hurry from one useless ".meeting" to another and think themselves busy; and I cannot help thinking, they would serve the State better if they dismissed their servants and did some real work themselves. Servants multiply work. I and (haring dismissed three) that with the help of a woman, whose husband is serving, for grates and washing up, our house is cleaner and more comfortable at a cost of 5s. to Gs. a week than it was with about £60 going out in wages and food, ac., extra. When we get Prohibition—which I earnestly hope we may— perhaps barley meal will be cheaper. At present it is dearer than flour, my late 'baker tells me, and counts as flour in the State allowance, so there seems no object in using it. Many cooks say it takes so much more coal to bake. It need not if the range is cleaned daily. What takes the coal is heating through layers of soot caused by the cooks' objection to cleaning the flues more than
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