We have now got the loaf made, and the next thing is to bake it; for the home-baked loaf, the oven of a kitchener or gas stove will do very well, and the heat should be about 400 deg. Fahr. A baker’s oven is a thing per se. For hundreds of years they were made on the same old pattern, but now, except in many of the small underground bakeries, they are scientifically built, fitted with pyrometers, and with internal lamps. Mr. Austin writes thus of the oven:

‘The baker’s oven is generally a brick oven, heated thoroughly with coal or wood according to construction; if made for coal, the damper will be on the one side and the furnace on the other, so that the flames play all round the oven; if constructed for wood, it must be heated with a good solid heat, with wood burnt in the interior of the oven, and then well cleaned out with a scuffle. As to the degrees of heat of the oven the laborious explanations and number of them may be reduced to three—viz., sharp or “flash,” as named in recipes; the second degree, moderate or “solid,” as used for large or solid articles, as wedding cakes, &c.; then slack or cool.

‘The baker’s old-fashioned method of testing the temperature of his oven is instructive. He throws flour on the floor. If it blackens without taking fire137 the heat is sufficient. It might be supposed that this is too high a temperature, as the object is to cook the bread, not to burn it; but we must remember that the flour which has been prepared for baking is mixed with water, and the evaporation of this water will materially lower the temperature of the dough itself. Besides this, we must bear in mind that another object is to be attained. A hard shell or crust has been formed, which will so encase and support the lump of dough as to prevent it from subsiding when the further evolution, carbonic gas, shall cease, which will be the case some time before the cooking of the mass is completed. It will happen when the temperature reaches the point at which the yeast cells can no longer germinate, when the temperature is below the boiling point of water.

‘In spite of all this outside temperature, that of the inner part of the loaf is kept down to a little above 212 degrees by the evaporation of the water contained in the bread; the escape of this vapour and the expansion of carbonic acid bubbles by heat increasing the porosity of the loaf. The outside being heated considerably above the temperature of the inner part, this variation produces the difference between the crust and the crumb. The action of the high temperature indirectly converting some of the starch into dextrin will be understood from what is already stated, and also the partial conversion of this dextrin into caramel. Thus we have in the crust an excess of dextrin as compared with the crumb, and the addition of a variable quantity of caramel. In lightly baked bread, with the crust of uniform pale yellowish colour,138 the conversion of the dextrin into caramel has barely commenced, and the gummy character of the dextrin coating is well displayed. So much bread, especially the long staves of life common in France, appears as though they had been varnished, and their crust is partially soluble in water. This explains the apparent paradox that hard crust or dry toast is more easily digested than the soft crumb of bread, the cookery of the crumb not having been carried beyond the mere hydration of the gluten and the starch and such degree of dextrin formation as was due to the action of the diastaste of grain during the preliminary period of “rising.”’

A form of oven now much in vogue is borrowed from Vienna. It is built of stone or brick; the roof is very low, and the floor slopes upwards towards the far end. The effect of this form of construction is to drive the steam rising from the loaves down on to the top of them again, thereby giving them the glazed surface so much admired in foreign bread. Steam is sometimes driven in with the same object; being lighter than that rising from the bread, it drives the latter down. The ovens are heated from below. Loaves remain in for one and a half or two hours.

As in everything connected with baking, during the past few years great improvements have been made in bakers’ ovens. Science has been brought to bear upon them, and we now have them heated by gas or steam in addition to coal and coke, besides improved alterations in many ways.

Nor do modern improvements in baking appliances stop short at ov............