Bread, cakes, and biscuits

But be this as it may, even if only for a change, it were well if home bakery were at all events occasionally resorted to ; and it would be doubtless, but for the queer sort of superstition regarding the difficulty and labour of breadmaking that has grown up since the art died out of general use. You are referred to statistics to show how laborious is the life of a baker, and how unhealthy its circumstances ; but people who make these assertions forget the difference there is between baking a batch of bread for one family occasionally in a light, airy, clean kitchen, and the incessant labour of the half a score of men who, frequently under most insanitary conditions, have to supply the wants of several hundreds of families with bread and pastry of all kinds. Granted that in large bakeries the number of assistants is greater, but then so also is the number of families to be supplied. It is quite on the cards that, if in a generation or two public kitchens (that Utopia of the harassed or incompetent housewife) become the rule, our descendants may find it as hard to get the humble chop cooked at home as we do now the making of bread. The requisites for home bakery are neither numerous nor costly, though, of course, if the demand is large, the supply of such properties will have to be in proportion, but the same rule applies to ordinary cooking. An earthen or stoneware bread pan should form part of every well set-up kitchen, concerning which article, by the way, there are a few points that deserve more attention than they obtain. (A bread pan should be emptied out daily, and carefully wiped all over ; once a week it should be thoroughly scalded out, and well dried before the bread is returned to it ; then hot fresh bread should never be shut into the bread pan unless the latter has some provision for the escape of the steam from such loaves, and even so the hot bread should not be put in if there are other loaves in the pan. Bread put hot into the bread pan and covered down will always deteriorate. Again, the bread pan must not be kept either in a warm cupboard, which renders its contents stale and hard, or in a cold damp larder, where they will infallibly become mildewy and soft.) Besides this pan, one or more baking sheets or tins, one or two large pans or basins (or later on a wooden trough) for mixing the dough in, one or more wooden spoons for mixing, a set of scales for weighing the ingredients, a measuring glass or cup marked up to a pint (this is not absolutely necessary, but saves a lot of trouble), and a few various sized and shaped loaf and roll moulds or tins are required, together with a rasp. The latter also is not indispensable, but -where bread is regularly baked it is a convenience, for, in spite of the greatest care, it is not always possible to prevent loaves and rolls from “catching ” or burning, and the black, hard surface is best and most appetisingly removed by this rasp, -which well repays its small cost. With regard to loaf moulds, these are a matter of taste. The weight of the quartern or half quartern loaf is fixed by law, and any deviation in its weight is consequently punishable, but the weights of the so-called “ fancy ” loaves are only “ reputed,” and by no means invariable.