FoodNet

The housekeeper's companion

1883

Page 127 · 2 recipe records on this page

Presented as published in 1883. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
Crumb, and soak in warm water half an hour before using. Potato yeast is made by omitting hops and flour, but mash- ing the potatoes fine with the same proportion of other ingre- dients, and adding the old yeast, when cool, as before. It is very nice, but must be made fresh every week; while the other, kept in a cool place, will be good a month. Bread. — For four loaves of bread of the pan-size given above, allow as follows: Four quarts of flour; one large cupful of yeast; one tablespoonful of saltYeast, one of sugar, and one of butter or lard; one pint of milk mixed with one of warm water, or one quart of water alone for the "wetting." Sift the flour into a large pan or bowl. Put the sugar, salt, and butter in the bottom of the bread pan or bowl, and pour on a spoonful or two of boiling water, enough to dissolve all. Add the quart of wetting and the yeast. Now stir in slowly two quarts of the flour; cover with a cloth, and set in a tempera- ture of about 75 degrees to rise until morning. Bread mixed at nine in the evening will be ready to mold into loaves or rolls by six the next morning. In summer it would be neces- 186 HOUSEHOLD. sary to find a cool place; in winter a warm one — the chief point being to keep the temperature even. If mixed early in the morning, it is ready to mold and bake in the afternoon, from seven to eight hours being all that it should stand. The first mixture is called a sponge; and, if only a loaf of graham or rye bread is wanted, one quart of it can be meas- ured and thickened with other flour, as in the rules given here- after. To finish as wheat bread, stir in enough flour from the two quarts remaining to make a dough. Flour the moulding-board very thickly, and turn out. Now begin kneading, flouring the hands, but after the dough is gathered into a smooth lump, using as little flour as may be. Knead with the palm of the hand as much as possible. The dough quickly becomes a flat cake. Fold it over, and keep on kneading not less than twenty minutes; half an hour being better. Make into loaves; put into the pans; set them in a warm place, and let them rise from thirty to forty-five, minutes, or till they have become nearly double in size. Bake in an oven hot enough to brown a teaspoonful of flour in one minute; spreading the flour on a bit of broken plate, that it may have an even heat. Loaves of this size will bake in from forty-five to sixty minutes. Then take them from the pans; wrap in thick cloths kept for the purpose, and stand them tilted up against the pans till cold. Never lay hot bread on a pine table, as it will sweat, and absorb the pitchy odor and taste; but tilt so that air may pass around it freely. Keep well covered in a tin box, or large stone pot, which should be wiped out every day or two, and scalded and dried thoroughly now and then. Pans for wheat bread should be greased very lightly; for graham or rye, much more, as the dough sticks and clings. Instead of mixing a sponge, all the flour , may be molded in and kneaded at once, and the dough set to rise in the same way. When light, turn out. Use as little flour as possible, and knead for fifteen minutes; less time being required, as part of the kneading has already been done.