The prime requisite for good bread is good flour. Without good flour the best cook cannot possibly make good bread. Obviously, it is poor economy to buy the poorer grades of flour, and if your local dealer cannot or will not furnish you with the best, send an order to the nearest town or city, and insist upon getting the right kind. Flour made from inferior wheat or wheat that has been exposed to moisture produces a heavy, moist bread, which moulds quickly.

To test bread flour, according to Mrs. Rorer, make a small ball of dough from flour and water, knead well, as for bread, and then quickly break the ball or biscuit in half. It should break with a crack, but if it is poor flour it will first pull and stretch and finally break without a sound. Another test is to take a handful of flour, close the hand tightly, then open it, and if the flour falls apart and does not pack, it is good for bread or biscuits. The color should be a rich, creamy tint- blue-white or greyish tints indicate poor, cheap flour.

Pastry flour should never be used for bread, biscuits or muffins, but only for fine pastry, cakes and similar light mixtures that do not require kneading. Genuine pastry flour is a pale, yellowish white, fine and starchy, and will easily retain the form of the hand upon pressure. It is usually sold in small boxes or bags, but very seldom, if ever, in bulk, to retailers. The only permissible substitute for genuine pastry flour, when that cannot be obtained, is a soft, winter-wheat flour.

Whole wheat flour is of a dark, brown color, rather coarse, and should be free from bran, which is the outside coat of the wheat. All the other nutritive parts of the wheat grain are retained in the whole wheat flour, while only the inner portions are used for the fine white flour, which lacks many of, the more nutritious elements. Bread made from whole wheat flour is considered by physicians to be the best diet for young and old-especially those suffering from weak digestion, for, nursing mothers and for those inclined to be anaemic, especially children inclined to rickets, and those whose teeth show signs of early decay, as whole wheat is rich in alkaline phosphates.

Again, according to Mrs. Rorer, most graham flour sold in our markets is composed of a little white flour and a goodly quantity of bran, mixed with a certain proportion of "shorts" or "middlings." These particles being indestructible, graham bread therefore cannot be recommended very highly for steady consumption.

Experienced housewives know that flour varies in its capacity to absorb moisture, and that therefore no recipe can indicate exactly the necessary amount of flour to be used. A little practice, perseverance and common sense will soon teach ambitious beginners the methods which will produce best results.