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Classic
Cook Books
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page 213
now sold in most grocery stores, makes fine light, sweet bread, and is a much
quicker process, and can always be had fresh, being made fresh every day.
WHEAT BREAD.
Sift the flour into a large bread-pan or bowl; make a hole in the middle of it,
and pour in the yeast in the ratio of half a teacupful of yeast to two quarts of
flour; stir the yeast lightly, then pour in your "wetting," either milk or
water, as you choose,--which use warm in winter, and cold in summer; if you use
water as "wetting," dissolve in it a bit of butter of the size of an egg, --if
you use milk, no butter is necessary; stir in the "wetting" very lightly, but do
not mix all the flour into it; then cover the pan with a thick blanket or towel,
and set it, in winter, in a warm place to rise,--this is call "putting the bread
in sponge." In summer the bread should not be wet over night. In the morning add
a teaspoonful of salt and mix all the flour in the pan with the sponge, kneading
it well; then let it stand two hours or more until it has risen quite light;
then removethe dough to the molding-board and mold it for a long time, cutting
it in pieces and molding them together again and again, until the dough is
elastic under the pressure of your hand, using as little flour as possible; then
make it into loaves, put the loaves into baking-tins. The loaves should come
half-way up the pan, and they should be allowed to rise until the bulk is
doubled. When the loaves are ready to be put into the oven, the oven should be
ready to receive them. It should be hot enough to brown a teaspoonful of flour
in five minutes. The heat should be greater at the bottom than at the top of the
oven, and the fire so arranged as to give sufficient strength of heat through
the baking without being replenished. Let them stand ten or fifteen minutes,
prick them three or four times with a fork, bake in a quick oven from forty-five
to sixty minutes.
If these directions are followed, you will obtain sweet, tender and wholesome
bread. If by any mistake the dough becomes sour before you are ready to bake it,
you can rectify it by adding a little dry supercarbonate of soda, molding the
dough a long time to distribute the soda equally thoroughout the mass. All bread
is better, if naturally sweet, without the soda; but sour bread you should never
eat, if you desire good health.
Keep well covered in a tin box or large stone crock, which should be wiped out
every day or two, and scalded and dried thoroughly in the sun once a week.
COMPRESSED YEAST BREAD.
Use for two loaves of bread three quarts of sifted flour, nearly a quart of warm
water, a level tablespoonful of salt, and an ounce of compressed yeast.
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