The complete cook book

Three large, old potatoes, pared, soaked, and boiled until broken in small pieces ; half a cup of loose hops boiled in one quart of water. Drain and mash the potatoes; add the hop water and enough more hot water to make two quarts. Strain, rubbing all the potato through, and put it on to boil. When boiling, add three-fourths of a cup of flour, which has been wet to a smooth paste in cold water, and three-quarters of a cup of sugar. Boil five minutes, stirring well ; let it cool ; add three-fourths of a cup of yeast ; and, when well risen, add one-fourth of a cup of salt. Keep in a covered stone jar in a cool cellar. Bread made with this yeast will not sour even in the hottest weather. BREAD. Bread, to be wholesome and palatable, should be light and porous. Good bread demands good flour, which should be smooth and white, with a yellow cast, and the dough or paste made with it should be elastic and tough. Old Process or Haxel flour makes a sweet, nutritious bread. Good bread is difficult to make, and is the highest accomplishment in culinary science. MOTHER'S YEAST. The most essential thing to start with is good yeast. Old potatoes are best, and they as well as the hops must be boiled in a granite or porcelain saucepan, and the water must be boiling. Use a wooden spoon. Take six large potatoes, pare them and put them in plenty of water. Then take three or four tablespoonfuls of hops, tie them in a muslin bag and put these in water with the potjatoes. Boil slowly so as to get the good of the hops. After they have boiled soft, put them through a strainer, add cne-half teacup of sugar and one-quarter teacup of salt ; put in a scrupulously clean stone jar, and if the mixture doesn't make two quarts, add enough boiling water to make it measure two quarts. Let it cool until blood warm ; add a teacupful of good yeast, or a cake of compressed yeast dissolved in warm watery 194 The Complete Cook Book. aet it near the fire or in a warm place, covering with a towel only until it bubbles up, then cover and stand in a cool place. Reserve a portion for the next rising in a small jar by itself, thus avoiding bought yeast. Always shake or stir well before using. DOUGH. The excellency of the bread depends on the thoroughness of the kneading. When you first begin the dough will be soft and sticky, but the longer you knead the less sticky it becomes. Pound the dough with a rolling pin, and cut it freely with a silver knife. Thirty minutes is the allotted time for this portion of the work if perfect results are to be obtained. MOTHER'S BREAD. Four quarts of flour, one-quarter pint of lukewarm potato water or one potato boiled down in water, onehalf pint of yeast. If milk be used instead of water, it should be scalded. Make a hole in middle of flour and mix up the yeast and water. Then cover with several thicknesses of cloth and a tightly fitting tin cover and set sponge in a warm place over night. Next morning add one teaspoonful of salt, one tablespoonful of melted lard and a piece of butter the size of an English walnut (melted). Mix up with blood- warm water sufficient to make a soft dough — do not have it too stiff. Knead well thirty minutes and allow it to rise until quite light. Then put it ir pans, brush it over with melted butter and let it rise again until it is ready to bake. Bake in a hot oven. Rolls require longer to rise and a hotter oven than a loaf. An authority, well-known, says the oven must be hot enough to brown a teaspoonful of flour in one minute for rolls and five minutes for a loaf. The first twenty minutes the heat should increase, remain steady during the next and decrease toward the last. Brush your rolls with hot milk before baking and with melted butter while still hot. Do not cover the loaves, but wrap them while hot Li jeveral thicknesses of table linen or bread cloth. The Complete Cook Book. 195