Camp cookery (Kephart)

In six to eight hours the whole will be in active fermentation, when the dough must be mixed with it, and as much warm water (milk, if you have it) as you require. Knead the mass till it is tough and does not stick to the board. Make up your loaves, and keep them warmly covered near the fire till they rise. They must be baked as soon as this second rising takes place; for, unless the rising is used immediately on reaching its height, it sinks to rise no more. To Raise Bread in a Pot. — Set the dough to rise over a very few embers, keeping the pot turned as the loaf rises. When equally risen all around, put hot ashes under the pot and upon the lid, taking care that the heat be not too fierce at first. Lungwort Bread. — On the bark of maples^ and sometimes of beeches and birches^ in the northern woods, there grows a green, broad-leaved lichen variously known as lungwort, liverwort, lunglichen, and lung-moss, which is an excellent substitute for yeast. This is an altogether different growth from the plants commonly^ called lungwort and liverwort — I believe its scientific name is Sticta pulmonacea. This lichen is partly made up of fungus, which does the business of raising dough. Gather a little of it and steep it over night in lukewarm water, set near the embers, but not near enough to get overheated. In the morning, pour oft' the infusion and mix it with enough flour to make a batter, beating it up with a spoon. Place this "sponge" in a warm can or pail, cover with a cloth, and set it near the fire to work. By evening it will have risen. Leaven your dough with this (saving some of the sponge for a future baking), let the bread rise before the fire that night, and by morning it will be ready to bake. It takes but little of the original sponge to leaven a large mass of dough (but see that it never freezes), and it can be kept good for months. Unleavened Bread. — Quickly made, wholesome, and good for a change. Keeps like hardtack. 21/2 pints flour, 1 tablespoonful salt, 1 tablespoonful sugar. Mix with water to stiff dough, and knead and pull until lively. Roll out thin as a soda cracker, score with knife, and bake. Unleavened bread that is to be carried for a long time must be mixed with as little water as possible (merely dampened enough to make it adhere), for if any moisture 13 left in it after baking, it will mould. To Mix Dough Without a Pan. — When bark will peel, use a broad sheet of it (paper birch, basswood, poplar, cottonwood, slippery elm, etc.). It is easy to mix unleavened dough in the sack of flour itself. Stand the latter horizontally where it can't fall over. Scoop a bowl-shaped depression in top of flour. Keep the right hand moving round while you pour in a little water at a time from a vessel held in the left. Sprinkle a little salt in. When a thick, adhesive dough has formed, lift this out and pat and work it into a round cake about 2^/2 inches thick. CORN BREAD. Plain corn bread, without flour, milk, or egg, is hard to make eatable without a Dutch oven to bake it in. Even so, it is generally spoiled by being baked too fast and not long enough to be done inside. Johnny Cake. — 1 quart meal, 1 teaspoon fill salt, 1 pint icarm (but not scalding) water (l^/^ pints for old meal).