Baked Bread – Brigham Young,1877

Give [your children] a little bread . . .—not soft bread, teach your children to eat crust—hard baked bread, that the Americans would call stale, but the English would not. Mothers, . . . let them eat . . . bread that is well baked, not soft. Do not put your loaf into the oven with a fire hot enough to burn it before it is baked through, but with a slow heat, and let it remain until it is perfectly baked; and I would prefer, for my own eating, each and every loaf to be no thicker than my two hands—you tell how thick they are—and I would want the crust as thick as my hand. . . .

I have many and many a time said to children when they begged for the soft bread, that was not baked thoroughly, “Look here; you will not live very long; you will probably come to a premature grave.” I have noticed invariably the child that selects the soft bread to be a short-lived person. The children that hunt around after the crust and eat it, I have noticed endure, live, and continue to live on. Have you ever noticed this? I have quite aged sisters here; and I am talking to many that have children, grand-children and great-grand-children, like myself. Have you ever observed this? If you have not I wish you would commence to reflect upon it. [“Relief Societies—Talk to Mothers—Improvement Societies—Domestic Matters—Training Children—Home Production—Silk Interests,” reported by James Taylor, Journal of Discourses, vol. 19 (Liverpool: William Budge, 1878), pp. 67–68.]

Brigham Young, President of the Church, 19 July 1877