As compared with most meats and vegetables, bread has practically no waste and is very completely digested, but it is usually too poor in proteins to be fittingly used as the sole article of diet, but when eaten with due quantities of other food, it is invaluable and well deserves its title of "Staff of Life." When the housewife "sets" bread sponge to rise over night, she should mix the sponge or dough quite late, and early in the morning mold it at once into shapely-looking loaves (should the sponge have had the necessary amount of flour added the night before for making a stiff dough).
Being aware of the great nutritive value of raisins and dried currants, Aunt Sarah frequently added a cup of either one or the other, well-floured, to the dough when shaping into loaves for the final rising.
Aunt Sarah frequently used a mixture of butter and lard when baking on account of its being more economical, and for the reason that a lesser quantity of lard may be used; the shortening qualities being greater than that of butter.

The taste of lard was never detected in her bread or cakes, they being noted for their excellence, as the lard she used was home-rendered, almost as sweet as dairy butter, free from taste or odor of pork.

She always beat lard to a cream when using it for baking cakes, and salted it well before using, and I do not think the small quantity used could be objected to on hygienic principles.
I have read "bread baking" is done once every three or four weeks, no oftener, in some of the farm houses of Central Europe, and yet stale bread is there unknown.

Their method of keeping bread fresh is to sprinkle flour into a large sack and into this pack the loaves, taking care to have the top crusts of bread touch each other.

If they have to lie bottom to bottom, sprinkle flour between them.