Bread, cakes, and biscuits

Yeast, to Remove its Bitterness. — If you use brewer’s yeast, and it happens at any time to be bitter, put about half as much water as you have yeast, and strain the two through a hair sieve half full of bran. This may have to be repeated two or three times, but will in the end remove all bitterness. Baking powder, roughly speaking, consists of a mixture of tartaric acid, carbonate of soda, and flour of some kind. These are mixed dry into the other ingredients (indeed, their goodness depends on this dryness), and, when thus mixed for use with the bread or cake materials, will effervesce like a Siedlitz powder (which, indeed, I have known to be used in the Australian bush by a squatter anxious for bread, or, as he called it, “ damper ”) ; the carbonic gas thus generated giving the required lightness to the dough or paste. Owing to this effervescence, bread or cakes made with baking powder must be “ fired ” at once, or the effervescence will go off, and leave the dough “ sad.” Care must be taken in choosing baking powder, for though that prepared by good makers such as Borwick, Cowan, &c., is thoroughly satisfactory, yet it is a melancholy fact that few things are more adulterated than the cheaper kinds of baking powder. Where it is not possible to get a really good form, it may be easily prepared at home thus : Measure out carefully two parts tartaric acid to three parts each of carbonate of soda and fine flour, crème de riz, or arrowroot, or, indeed, any fine kind of farinaceous preparation. You can make this in any quantities desired, only observing the proportions strictly ; sift the ingredients well together and store them in perfectly dry, airtight bottles. Some people keep the chemicals separately, measuring and mixing them out as desired, but this is scarcely a good plan, for the success of baking powder depends fully as much on its exact proportions as on the purity of the materials. Another raising mixture is known as “ egg powder,” and for this the ingredients are as follows : Sift together IGoz. u> tartaric acid, lib. carbonate of soda, 21b. potato flour, and about 1| drachms of turmeric. If the turmeric is omitted, this makes by no means a bad baking powder. Failing baking powder, a mixture of sour milk and carbonate of soda, in the proportion of one teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda to half a pint of milk, is excellent for cakes, scones, &c. Indeed, in Scotland it is chiefly used for the latter purpose. Finally, besides baking powders of various sorts, there are the self-raising flours, such as Coomb’s Eureka, or Brown and Poison’s Paisley flour, in which fine wheat or cornflour are carefully mixed with a due proportion of chemicals, and simply need to be wetted without other addition to make the dough. Both the flours mentioned are highly to be recommended for the use of amateurs, full directions foi their use being sent with them. A very good home-made self-raising flour of this kind is produced by sifting together, carefully and repeatedly, loz. of tartaric acid and Joz. of bicarbonate of soda, with 21b. of fine flour. Be sure this is well blended, and keep it in a dry place in a well-covered wooden or earthenware pan.