The housekeeper's companion

Tomatoes Stewed. — Pour on boiling water, to take off the skins: cut in pieces, and stew slowly for half an hour; adding for a dozen tomatoes a tablespoonful of butter, a teaspoonful of salt, a saltspoonful of pepper, and a teaspoonful of sugar. Where they are preferred sweet, two tablespoonfuls of sugar will be necessary. They may be thickened with a tablespoonful of flour or corn-starch dissolved in a little cold water, or with half a cupful of rolled cracker or bread crumbs. Canned tomatoes are stewed in the same way. Bread-Making and Flour. — Much of the health, and consequently much of the happiness, of the family depends upon good bread; therefore, no pains should be spared in learning the best method of making, which will prove easiest in the end. Yeast, flour, kneading, and baking must each be perfect, and nothing in the whole range of cooking is of such prime importance. Once master the problem of yeast, and the first form of wheat bread, and endless varieties of both bread and breakfast cakes can be made. The old and the new process flour — the former being known as the St. Louis, and the latter as Haxall flour — are now to be had at all good grocers; and from either good bread may be made, though that from the latter keeps moist longer. Potapsco flour is of the same quality as the St. Louis. It contains more starch than the St. Louis, and for this reason requires, even more than that, the use in the family of coarser, or graham flour, at the same time; white bread alone not being as nutritious or strengthening. Flour made by the new process swells more than that by the old, and a little less quantity — about an eighth less — is therefore required in mixing and kneading. As definite rules as possible are given for the whole operation; but experience alone can insure perfect bread, changes of temperature affecting it once, and baking being also a critical point. Pans made of thick tin, or, better still, of Russia iron, ten inches long, four or five wide, and four deep, make the best shaped loaf, and one requiring a reasonably short time to bake. Yeast. — Ingredients: One teacupful of lightly broken hops; one pint of sifted flour; one cupful of sugar; one tablespoonful of salt; four large or medium-sized potatoes; and two quarts of boiling water. Boil the potatoes and mash them fine. At the same time, having tied the hops in a little bag, boil them for half an hour in two quarts of water, but in another saucepan. Mix the flour, sugar, and salt well together in a large mixing-bowl, and pour on the boiling hop-water, stirring constantly. Now add enough of this to the mashed potato to thin it till it can be poured, and mix all together, straining it through a sieve to avoid any possible lumps. Add to this, when cool, either a cupful of yeast left from the last, or of baker's yeast, or a Twin Brothers' yeast cake, dissolved in a little warm water. Let it stand till partly light, and then stir down two or three times in the course of five or six hours, as this makes it stronger. At the end of that time it will be light. Keep in a covered stone jar, or in glass cans. By stirring in corn meal till a dough is made, and then forming it in small cakes and drying in the sun, dry yeast is made, which keeps better than the liquid in hot weather.