THE question is often asked, “What is the most important branch of culinary knowledge? What the chief requisite in supplying the table well and healthfully?”
The experienced housewife cannot hesitate as to the reply.
Beyond doubt, the ability to make good bread. No one need rise hungry from a table on which is plenty of light, sweet bread, white or brown, and good butter. For the latter item many of us are dependent upon market and grocery. It is hardly just to hold the cook responsible for imperfections in this regard when she has bought the best articles these supply. She is culpable if she fails to see that her board furnishes three times a day a bountiful allowance of what I hope none of my friends in council will ever call “healthy bread.” The eater may be made or kept healthy by the consumption of nutritious, wholesome, healthful or healthsome food; but the most careful philologists do not speak of edibles as subject to such diseases as may afflict living creatures.
While it is always wise to use none except the best flour in bread-making, it is true that skilful management of an inferior brand will often produce better loaves and biscuits than careless treatment of fine family flour. I say this that none may be discouraged. So far as my observation and experience extend, nothing can remedy the disadvantage of indifferent yeast.
Let me earnestly advise, therefore, as the foundation of successful baking, the manufacture of
Four large mealy potatoes, peeled.
Two quarts of cold water.
One teacupful of loose, dry hops, or, half a cake of the pressed hops put up by the Shakers and sold by druggists.
Two tablespoonfuls of white sugar.
Four tablespoonfuls of flour.
Half a cupful lively yeast, or a yeast-cake dissolved in a little warm water.
Put water, potatoes, and the hops tied up in a bit of coarse muslin, over the fire in a clean pot or kettle. Boil until the potatoes break apart when a fork is stuck into them. Unless they are very old or very new, this should be half an hour after the boiling begins. Take out the potatoes, leaving water and hops on the range where they will boil slowly. Mash the potatoes smooth in a wooden tray or large crockery bowl, with a wooden spoon, and work in the sugar. When these are well-mixed wet the paste with three tablespoonfuls of the boiling hop-tea, then stir in a tablespoonful of flour. Do this four times, beating and stirring to get rid of lumps. When the flour is all in, add, a little at a time, the rest of the hop-tea, squeezing the bag hard to get every drop. Throw the boiled hops away, and wash the cloth or bag well before putting it aside for the next yeast-making.
Strain the thick, grayish liquid through a colander into a bowl and let it get almost but not quite cold before you stir in the half cupful of made yeast that is to “raise” it. Set aside out of the dust and wind, put a sieve or throw a bit of mosquito netting over it, and leave it to work. It is a good plan to set the bowl in a large pan or dish to catch what may run over the sides. When the yeast ceases to sing or hiss, and the bubbles no longer rise and break on the surface, the fermentation is complete. Four or five hours in July, seven in January, usually bring this to pass. Pour the yeast into glass fruit-jars with close covers, or stone-jars fitted with corks, or common bottles, tying the corks down with twine. Keep in a cool, dark place, and do not open except to draw off the quantity needed for a baking. In the refrigerator it will keep good for a month. Shake up the bottle before pouring out what you want into a cup.
The creamy, foamy product thus obtained is quite another thing from the dark, bitter stuff pedled from one kitchen door to another as brewer’s or baker’s yeast, unfit for use unless strained, and then too frequently “unprofitable” because “stale” and “flat.”
One quart and a cupful of sifted flour (a half pint cup)
One even teaspoonful dry salt.
Two full cups of blood-warm water.
Five tablespoonfuls of yeast (good ones).
Sift the flour and salt together into a wooden or stoneware bowl. Make a hole in the middle and pour in the yeast, then a cupful of the water. With clean hands begin to work down the flour into the liquid, and as it stiffens add the rest of the water. When the dough is all wet dust your fingers with dry flour, and rub off the paste into the bowl. Scrape the sides of this, dust your fingers again, and make all the dough into a lump or ball. Dredge your pastry or bread-board well with flour, put the dough upon it and sift flour lightly over it. Ask your mother or some experienced person whether or not it is of the right consistency. There is so much difference in various brands of flour that only practice can teach one when the dough is just right. Do not get it too stiff. Add flour very cautiously even should it stick to your fingers. Knead the bread for fifteen minutes—not so fast as to tire yourself out of breath, but steadily and hard, working it away from you all the time, turning the ball over and around so as to reach every part of the mass. It should leave the board without stickiness at the end of this time, be smooth, firm, and elastic. Strike it hard with a tight fist, and if the dent thus made fills up at once, you have kneaded it sufficiently.
Sprinkle your bread-bowl with flour, put the dough in the bottom, sift flour lightly over the top, cover with a clean thick cloth and set, in cold weather, in a moderately warm place, in summer, out of the draught, but away from the fire and sun. It should be light in four hours in warm weather, in six in winter. If you wish to have it for breakfast, set at bedtime, and get up early to work it over for the second rising.
This must not be done until the dough has swollen immensely, and cracked over the top like “crazed” china. Flour the board and knead as before, now for ten minutes. Grease two “brick” or round bread-pans well with sweet lard or butter, make out the dough in two oblong or round loaves, and pat these down in the pans to fit the corners. Prick the tops with a sharp fork, cover with a clean cloth, and let them stand for an hour before putting them into the oven.
The oven must be steady, but not too hot. You should be able to hold your bare arm in it while you count twenty regularly. Should the bread rise very fast at first, lay stout paper over the top to prevent it from browning before the heart is done. Do not allow the stove or range to be filled with fresh coal or wood while your bread is in the oven, or it will be “slack-baked.” Should you need to increase the heat, put in a stick or two of wood to get up a brisk blaze. Do not open the oven for ten or twelve minutes after the bread goes in, and very seldom afterward. A peep should suffice to see how it is getting on. If the loaf rises higher at the back or at one side than in front or on the other side, turn the tin quickly, and do not jar it, or it will “fall” into heavy streaks. If the oven is right, your loaves should be done in about thirty-five minutes.
Set the loaves up on the edge of one end, leaning against the wall or an upright board, that the air may dry the bottom, throw a dry cloth over them and leave them to cool. When quite cold wrap in a clean thick cloth and keep in a tin box or stone crock.
In this, as in other first attempts, let me warn you against being disheartened by failure, partial or total. It would be far more strange were you to accomplish perfection in one, or in half a dozen lessons, than if your early efforts should be only moderately successful.
See that your yeast is lively and not sour, the flour good and dry, then follow directions implicitly, and I think I can engage that the result will not mortify you.
BREAD raised with what is known to bakers as a “sponge,” requires more time and a trifle more work than the simpler form for which I have just already given directions. But it keeps fresh longer, is softer and more nutritious, and a second-rate brand of flour thus treated produces a better loaf than when mixed up with yeast and water only. Sponge-making is, therefore, an important if not an essential accomplishment in a cook, be she novice or veteran.
Three potatoes of fair size, peeled and boiled mealy.
Five tablespoonfuls of yeast.
One tablespoonful of white sugar.
One tablespoonful of butter.
Three cups of lukewarm water in which the potatoes were boiled—strained through a coarse cloth.
One heaping cup of sifted flour.
Put the potatoes into a large bowl or tray and mash them to powder with a potato beetle, or a wooden spoon. While still hot, mix in the sugar and butter, beating all to a lumpless cream.
Add a few spoonfuls at a time, the potato-water alternately with the flour by the handful, beating the batter smooth as you go on until all of the liquid and flour has gone in. Beat hard one minute before pouring in the yeast. In hot weather, it is well to stir into the yeast a bit of soda no larger than a grain of corn already wet up in a teaspoonful of boiling water.
Now whip up the batter with a wooden spoon for another minute, and the sponge is made.
Throw a cloth over the bowl and set by for five or six hours to rise. If you intend to bake in the forenoon, make the sponge at bedtime. If in the afternoon, early in the morning.
When the sponge is light sift a quart and a cup of flour into a bowl or tray with two teaspoonfuls of salt. Into a hollow, like a crater in the middle of the flour, empty your sponge-bowl, and work the flour down into it. Wash out the bowl with a little lukewarm water and add this to the dough. If it should prove too soft, work in, cautiously, a little more flour. If too stiff, warm water, a spoonful at a time until you can handle the paste easily. The danger is in getting it too stiff.
Now, knead and set for risings first and second, as you have already been instructed. This sponge will be found especially useful in making
One quart of Graham flour, one cup of white flour.
One half cup of Indian meal.
One half cup of molasses.
Two teaspoonfuls of salt.
Soda, the size of a pea.
Half the quantity of sponge given in preceding receipt.
Warm water for rinsing bowl—about half a cup.
Put the brown or Graham flour unsifted into the bread-bowl. Sift into it white flour, meal and salt, and stir up well while dry. Into the “crater” dug out in the middle, pour the sponge, warm water, the molasses, and soda dissolved in hot water. Knead as you would white bread, and set aside for the rising. It will not swell so fast as the white, so give yourself more time for making it.
When light, knead well and long; make into two loaves, then put into well-greased pans and leave for an hour, or until it becomes more than twice the original size of the dough.
Take care that it does not burn in baking. The molasses renders it liable to scorching. The oven must be steady, but not so hot as for white bread, nor will the Graham bread be done quite so soon as that made of bolted flour. Turn the pans once while baking, moving them as gently as possible. If rudely shaken or jarred, there will be heavy streaks in the loaves.
Graham bread is wholesome and sweet, and ought to be eaten frequently in every family, particularly by young people whose bones and teeth are in forming.
The phosphates which the process of “bolting” removes to a large extent from white flour, go directly to the manufacture of bone, and these also tend to nourish and strengthen the brain.
After mixing your bread in the morning either with sponge or with yeast, divide the kneaded dough into two portions. Mould one into a round ball, and set aside for a loaf as already directed. Make a hole in the middle of the other batch and pour into it a tablespoonful of butter, just melted, but not hot. Close the dough over it, dust your hands and kneading-board with flour and work in the shortening until the dough is elastic and ceases to be sticky. Put it into a floured bowl, cover with a cloth and set away out of draught and undue heat, for three hours. Knead it again, then, and wait upon its rising for another three hours. The dough should be as soft as can be handled.