Speaking of recipes of a by-gone era, here is a classic piece regarding bread baking found in Edward Abbott’s “The English and Australian Cookery Book”. (This was the first Australian cookbook, 1864.)

It is indicative of an attitude of a by-gone era, amusing to look at now, certainly not a lifestyle to be recommended:

“How wasteful then, and how shameful, for a labourer’s wife to go to a baker’s shop; and how negligent, how criminally careless of the welfare of his family must the labourer be who permits so scandalous a use of the proceeds of his labour!….. Give me, for a beautiful sight, a neat and smart woman, heating her oven and setting in her bread! And if the bustle does make the sign of labour glisten on her brow, where is the man that would not kiss that off rather than lick the plaster form the cheek of a Duchess? –Cobbett”