Foods and home making

1 The dry ingredients are sometimes sifted first into the mixing bowl. Then the egg, milk, sugar, and melted fat added to the dry ingredients. If the egg is beaten in the mixing bowl, there is no extra dish soiled in beating it. It seems more satis- factory also to sift the dry ingredients into the egg mixture. In this way you gradually thicken the liquid materials instead of gradually thinning the dry ingredients. Toast and Other Breakfast Breads 85 4. Sift the dry ingredients, i.e., the flour, baking powder, and salt, into the egg mixture. 5. Beat the mixture only enough to dampen the dry ingredients, mak- ing not more than 25 strokes of the spoon. The batter should look lumpy. How should pans be greased? Butter is one of our most expensive foods. It is well to save butter as much as possible. If you have melted the butter in a small pan or in a measuring cup, after pouring it out, wipe out the pan or cup with a bit of clean paper. Then rub the piece of buttered paper over the inside of the muffin cups. If there is not enough fat remaining in the saucepan or measuring cup to grease the pan, you may have to put a little more on the paper to finish greasing the pan. Usually, the extra fat is unnecessary. Only a thin film of fat is needed on the muffin pans. Many pupils waste butter by using too much in greasing a pan. How much batter should be put in the muffin cups ? Did you ever clean an oven after some food had run over during baking ? If you have ever had this experience, you will want to learn how to prevent baked foods from running over. Then, too, it is wasteful to let foods run over. Since muffins rise during baking, the muffin cups must not be filled to the top. Muffin cups should be filled not more than § full of batter. If there is not enough batter for all the cups, add water to those which have none. How hot should the oven be ? A large class of girls were asked to heat their ovens to a temperature which, by the feeling, they considered medium. The girls did so. When the exact tem- peratures of the ovens were measured by means of a ther- mometer, the temperatures were found to vary from 145 0 F. to 420° F.1 This test shows that the common method of opening the oven door and holding the hand in the oven is an inaccurate 1 F. is the abbreviation for Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit is the temperature scale commonly used on household thermometers. On this temperature scale water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212 degrees. 86 Breakfast way of judging the temperature of an oven. A person who has had a good deal of practice in testing an oven in this way may find it somewhat satisfactory. But if one is learning to judge oven temperatures, this method is unreliable. A more accurate method of heating an oven to the desired temperature is to use a portable oven thermometer or a device called an oven heat regulator. A portable oven thermometer is placed inside the oven. Unless there is glass in the oven door, the thermometer inside the oven is somewhat difficult to read. It is necessary to read a portable oven thermometer at once upon opening the oven door. If the oven door is opened, the cooler air enters and the thermometer does not register the true tem- perature of the oven.