Food and health

Quick breads take less time in the making than yeast bread. Then, too, we like a change in our bread foods. Mollie Stark's grandmother could remember seeing baking done in the brick oven once a week. A fire was made inside the oven, the ashes were swept out when the fire died down, and the food was cooked when the bricks or stones of the oven had cooled a little. Cake and pies were baked first ; then, white bread ; and last of all the brown bread, beans, and Indian pudding were put in, to be taken out for Sunday morning breakfast. (Frontispiece.) This baking was an important event and took all day ; enough cake, pies, and bread were baked for a week. How convenient, then, between times to bake johnnycake or hoecake on a board before the open fire, or to make quick biscuit with sour milk and saleratus and to bake them in the bake kettle that stood over the glowing coals with other coals of wood put on top of the iron cover. Mrs. Stark, the grandmother, was delighted when Miss James asked her one day to show the cooking class how to make a johnnycake like that she used to eat in her old home in Rhode Island. There they use white corn meal, as people are likely to do in the South, and the johnnycake is something like the southern hoecake. The class went one afternoon to the pleasant old homestead, where the grandmother was one of the happiest and busiest members of the household. Mrs. Stark explained that the name johnnycake is given to different corn-meal breads in different places, and that she is always careful to explain that hers are : Old-fashioned Rhode Island johnnycakes. What. White (or yellow) corn meal, boiling water, and salt. How much. Mrs. Stark says that it is of no use to try to give exact measures, because different kinds of meal take up different quantities of water. There must be enough water to soften the meal so that it will drop from a large* spoon, but not run out. Utensils. A bowl and spoon, and a griddle, with a broad knife for turning the cakes. Hozv to make. Mix the salt with the meal in the bowl. Pour on the boiling water. Mrs. Stark poured it from the teakettle, but said that you could pour it from a saucepan. She stirred the meal with one hand, holding the kettle in the other, pouring on the water until the meal was all softened but not very wet. Perhaps you can find somebody's grandmother to show you how. The griddle was hot and greased with beef fat. Mrs. Stark dropped a large spoonful at a time upon the hot griddle, and with a knife made each cake into a smooth oval about \ inch thick. She let the cakes brown on one side and then on the other. Then she set the griddle on the back of the stove, where the cakes would cook slowly. At the end of about half an hour, each cake had two crisp, brown crusts, easily split apart with a knife, ready to be buttered and eaten. While the cakes were cooking, Mrs. Stark told stories of old days ; and, when the cakes were eaten, the girls all declared that they were sweeter and better than popcorn, and that they couldn't be better baked on a board ; but Mrs. Stark insisted that they were. She explained that the johnnycake is more digestible than a more quickly cooked griddlecake, on account of the longer cooking. An exhibit of quick breads. Miss James suggested that the Pleasant Valley School should have an exhibit of their home work, and that muffins and biscuits, among other things, would keep fresh long enough to look well. Here are a few of the rules that they used for their quick breads : Popovers or puffovers. What and how much. Flour I pint Milk I pint Eggs 1 3 Salt \ teaspoonful ^ Some rules give two eggs only. Utensils. For bakingy heavy earthen cups, hot and greased.