Walden

leavening process, and through the various fermentations thereafter,
till I came to “good, sweet, wholesome bread,” the staff of life.
Leaven, which some deem the soul of bread, the _spiritus_ which fills
its cellular tissue, which is religiously preserved like the vestal
fire,—some precious bottle-full, I suppose, first brought over in the
Mayflower, did the business for America, and its influence is still
rising, swelling, spreading, in cerealian billows over the land,—this
seed I regularly and faithfully procured from the village, till at
length one morning I forgot the rules, and scalded my yeast; by which
accident I discovered that even this was not indispensable,—for my
discoveries were not by the synthetic but analytic process,—and I have
gladly omitted it since, though most housewives earnestly assured me
that safe and wholesome bread without yeast might not be, and elderly
people prophesied a speedy decay of the vital forces. Yet I find it not
to be an essential ingredient, and after going without it for a year am
still in the land of the living; and I am glad to escape the
trivialness of carrying a bottle-full in my pocket, which would
sometimes pop and discharge its contents to my discomfiture. It is