Bread

Ingredients

• four quarts of flour
• one large cup of yeast
• one tablespoonful of salt
• one tablespoonful of sugar
• one tablespoonful of butter or lard
• one pint of milk
• one quart of water

Method

1. 1

   Sift flour into a bowl.

2. 2

   Dissolve sugar, salt, and butter in boiling water.

3. 3

   Add milk and yeast, then mix with flour to form a dough.

Nutrition per serving

As published

This recipe was extracted from The easiest way in housekeeping and cooking (1881) by Helen Stuart Campbell, page 103. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

bread may be used instead of crumbs. Fried Tomatoes. Cut in thick slices. Mix in a plate half a teacupful of VEGETABLES. 207 flour, a saltspoonful of salt, and half a one of pepper ; and dip each slice in this, frying brown in hot butter. Boiled Tomatoes. Prepare as for frying, and broil in a wire broiler, putting a bit of butter on each slice when brown, and serving on a hot dish or on buttered toast. Rice. Wash in cold water, changing it at least twice. It is better if allowed to soak an hour. Drain, and throw into a good deal of boiling, salted water, allowing not less than two quarts to a cupful of rice. Boil twenty minutes, stir- ring now and then. Pour into a colander, that every drop of water may drain off, and then set it at the back of the stove to dry for ten minutes. In this way every grain is distinct, yet perfectly tender. If old, half an hour's boiling may be required. Test by biting a grain at the end of twenty minutes. If tender, it is done. Rice Croquettes. Where used as a vegetable with dinner, to a pint of cold boiled rice allow a tablespoonful of melted butter and one or two well-beaten eggs. Mix thoroughly. A pinch of cayenne or a little chopped parsley may be added. Make in the shape of corks ; egg and crumb, and fry a golden brown. Macaroni. Never wash macaroni if it can be avoided. Break in lengths of three or four inches and throw into boiling, salted water, allowing quarter of a pound for a dinner for three or four. Boil for half an hour, and drain off the 208 BEEAB AND BREAKFAST CAKES. water. It may be served plain with tomato sauce, or simply buttered, or with drawn butter poured over it. Macaroni with Cheese. Boil as directed. Make a pint of white sauce or roux^ as on p. 169, using milk if it can be had, though water answers. Have a cupful of good grated cheese. But- ter a pudding-dish. Put in a layer of macaroni, one of sauce, and one of cheese, ending with cheese. Dust the top with sifted bread or cracker crumbs, dot with bits of butter, and bake fifteen minutes in a quick oven. It can be baked in the same way without cheese, or with simply a cup of milk and two eggs added, making a sort of pud- ding BREAD AND BREAKFAST CAKES. Bread-making and Flour. Much of the health, and consequently much of the happiness, of the family depends upon good bread : there- fore no pains should be spared in learning the best meth- od of making, which will prove easiest in the end. Yeast, flour, kneading, and baking must each be per- fect, 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 — BREAD AND BREAKFAST CAKES. 209 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, for reasons given in Part I. Graham flour is fast being superseded by a much better form, prepared principally by the Health Food Company in New York, in which the entire grain, save the husk, is ground as fine as the ordinary flour, thus doing away with the coarseness that many have objected to in graham bread. 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 at 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 tablespoon- ful of salt ; four large or six 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 the two quarts of water, but in another 14 210 BREAD AND BREAKFAST CAKES. saucepan. Mix the flour, sugar, and salt well together m 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 hom-s, 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. Crumb, and soak in warm water half an hour before using. Potato yeast is made by omitting hops and flour, but mashing the potatoes fine with the same proportion of other ingredients, 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 cup of yeast ; one tablespoonful of salt, one of sugar, and one of butter or lard ; one pint of milk mixed with one of warm water, or one quart of water

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.