Buckeye Cookery

page 20

glaze, brush lightly with milk and sugar, or the well-beaten yolk of an egg
sweetened, and a little milk added.

Biscuit may be baked in eight minutes by making the oven as hot as can be
without burning, and allowing it to cool off gradually as they bake; this makes
them very light, but one has to watch closely to keep them from being scorched.
Any kind of bread or pastry mixed with water requires a hotter fire than that
mixed with milk.

Biscuit for tea at six must be molded two hours before, which will give ample
time for rising and baking. Parker House rolls for breakfast at eight must be
made ready at five. Many think it unnecessary to knead down either bread or
biscuit as often as here directed; but if attention is given to the dough at the
right time, and it is not suffered to become too light, it will be much nicer,
whiter and of a finer texture if these directions are followed.

Soda biscuit must be handled as little and made as rapidly as possible; mix soda
and cream tartar or baking-powder in the flour,
(with sweet milk use baking-powder or soda and cream tartar, with sour milk soda
alone,) so that the effervescence takes place in the mixture. One tea-spoon soda
and two of cream tartar, or three tea-spoons baking-powder, to every three pints
of flour, is about the right proportion. Bake in a quick oven as soon as made,
and they rise more quickly if put into hot pans. Gems of all kinds require a hot
oven, but the fire should be built sometimes before they are put into the oven
and allowed to go down by the time they are light, as the heat necessary to
raise them will burn them in baking if kept up:

Soda and raised biscuit and bread or cake, when stale, can be made almost as
nice as fresh by plunging for an instant into cold water and then placing in a
pan in the oven ten or fifteen minutes; thus treated they should be used
immediately.

Waffle-irons should be heated, then buttered or greased with lard, and one side
filled with batter, closed and laid on the fire or placed on the stove, and
after a few minutes turned on the other side. They take about twice as long to
bake as griddle-cakes, and are delicious with a dressing of ground cinnamon.
Muffins are

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