It requires experience to make good bread. One must know, first, how long to let the bread rise, as it takes a longer time in cold than in warm weather; second, when the oven is just of proper temperature to bake it. Bread should be put in a rather hot oven. It is nearly light enough to bake when put in; so the rule for baking bread differs from that of baking cake, which should be put into a moderate oven at first, to become equally heated through before rising. As bread requires a brisk heat, it is well to have the loaves small, the French-bread loaves being well adapted to a hot oven. After the bread is baked, the loaves should be placed on end (covered) at the back of the table until they become cool.

To Make Yeast.

Ingredients: A cupful of baker’s yeast; four cupfuls of flour; two large potatoes, boiled; one cupful of sugar, and six cupfuls of boiling water.

Mix the warm mashed potatoes and sugar together; then add the flour; next, add the six cupfuls of boiling water, poured on slowly: this cooks the flour a little. It will be of the consistency of batter. Let the mixture get almost cold, stirring it well, that the bottom may become cool also. It will spoil the yeast if the batter be too hot. When lukewarm, add the tea-cupful of yeast. Leave this mixture in the kitchen, or in some warm place, perhaps on the kitchen-table (do not put it too near the stove), for five or six hours, until it gets perfectly light. Do not touch it until it gets somewhat light; then stir it down two or three times during the six hours. This process makes it stronger. Keep it in a cool place until needed.

This yeast will last perpetually, if a tea-cupful of it be always kept, when making bread, to make new yeast at the next baking. Keep it in a stone jar, scalding the jar every time fresh yeast is made.

In summer, it is well to mix corn-meal with the yeast, and dry it in cakes, in some shady, dry place, turning the cakes often, that they may become thoroughly dry. It requires about one and a half cakes (biscuit-cutter) to make four medium-sized loaves of bread. Crumb them, and let them soak in lukewarm water about a quarter or half an hour before using.

To make the Bread.

Ingredients: Flour, one and a half cupfuls of yeast, lukewarm water, a table-spoonful of lard, a little salt.

Put two quarts of flour into the bread-bowl; sprinkle a little salt over it; add one and a half cupfuls of yeast, and enough lukewarm water to make it a rather soft dough. Set it one side to rise. In winter, it will take overnight; in summer, about three hours. After it has risen, mix well into it one table-spoonful of lard; then add flour (not too much), and knead it half an hour. The more it is kneaded, the whiter and finer it becomes. Leave this in the bread-bowl for a short time to rise; then make it into loaves. Let it rise again for the third time. Bake.

Mrs. Bonner’s Bread.

This is a delicious bread, which saves the trouble of making yeast. Twenty-five cents’ worth of Twin Brothers’ yeast will last a small family six weeks. I would recommend Mrs. Bonner’s bread in preference to that of the last receipt. It is cheaper and better, at last, to always have good bread, which is insured by using fresh yeast each time.

For four loaves: At noon, boil three potatoes; mash them well; add a little salt, and two and a half cupfuls of flour; also enough boiling water (that in which the potatoes were boiled) to make rather a thin batter. Let it cool, and when it is at about blood-heat, add a Twin Brothers’ yeast-cake, soaked in half a tea-cupful of lukewarm water. One yeast-cake will be sufficient for four loaves of bread in summer; but use one and a half yeast-cakes in winter. Stir well, and put it in a warm place. At night it will be light, when stir in enough flour to make the sponge. Do not make it too stiff. If you should happen to want a little more bread than usual, add a little warm water to the batter. Let it remain in a warm place until morning, when it should be well kneaded for at least twenty minutes. Half an hour or more would be better. Return the dough to the pan, and let it rise again. When light, take it out; add half a tea-spoonful of soda, dissolved in a table-spoonful of water; separate it into four loaves; put them in the pans, and let it rise again. When light, bake it an hour.

French Bread (Grace Melaine Lourant).

Put a heaping table-spoonful of hops and a quart of hot water over the fire to boil. Have ready five or six large boiled potatoes, which mash fine. Strain the hops. Now put a pint of boiling water (that in which the potatoes were boiled) over three cupfuls of flour; mix in the mashed potatoes, then the quart of strained hot hop-water, a heaping tea-spoonful of sugar, and the same of salt. When this is lukewarm, mix in one and a half Twin Brothers’ yeast-cakes (softened). Let this stand overnight in a warm place.

In the morning, a new process is in order: First, pour over the yeast a table-spoonful of warm water, in which is dissolved half a spoonful of soda; mix in lightly about ten and a half heaping tea-cupfuls of sifted flour. No more flour is added to the bread during its kneading. Instead, the hands are wet in lukewarm water. Now knead the dough, giving it about eight or ten strokes; then taking it from the side next to you, pull it up into a long length, then double it, throwing it down snappishly and heavily. Wetting the hands again, give it the same number of strokes, or kneads, pulling the end toward you again, and throwing it over the part left in the pan. Continue this process until large bubbles are formed in the dough. It will take half an hour or longer. The hands should be wet enough at first to make the dough rather supple. If dexterously managed, it will not stick to the hands after a few minutes; and when it is kneaded enough, it will be very elastic, full of bubbles, and will not stick to the pan. When this time arrives, put the dough away again in a warm place to rise. This will take one or two hours.

Now comes another new process. Sprinkle plenty of flour on the board, and take out lightly enough dough to make one loaf of bread, remembering that the French loaves are not large, nor of the same shape as the usual home-made ones. With the thumb and forefinger gather up the sides carefully (to prevent doubling the meshes or grain of the dough) to make it round in shape. Flour the rolling-pin, press it in the centre, rolling a little to give the dough the form of cut.

Now give each puffed end a roll toward the centre, lapping well the ends. Turn the bread entirely over, pulling out the ends a little, to give the loaf a long form, as in cut.

Sprinkle plenty of flour on large baking-pans turned bottom side up, upon which lay this and the other loaves, a little distance apart, if there is room for two of them on one pan. Sprinkle plenty of flour on the tops, and set the pans by the side of the fire to again rise a little. It will take twenty-five or thirty minutes longer. Then bake.

Kneading bread in the manner just described causes the grain of the bread to run in one direction, so that it may be pealed off in layers. Kneading with water instead of flour makes the bread moist and elastic, rather than solid and in crumbs.

Petits Pains

are made as in last receipt, by lightly gathering a little handful of dough, picking up the sides, and turning it over in the form of a ball or a biscuit. They are baked as described for French bread, placing them a little distance apart, so that they may be separate little breads, each one enough for one person at breakfast.

Toast.

I have remarked before that not one person in a thousand knows how to make good toast. The simplest dishes seem to be the ones oftenest spoiled. If the cook sends to the table a properly made piece of toast, one may judge that she is a scientific cook, and may entertain, at the same time, exalted hopes of her.

The bread should not be too fresh. It should be cut thin, evenly, and in good shape. The crust edges should be cut off. The pieces shaved off can be dried and put in the bread-crumb can. The object of toasting bread is to extract all its moisture—to convert the dough into pure farina of wheat, which is very digestible. Present each side of the bread to the fire for a few moments to warm, without attempting to toast it; then turn about the first side at some distance from the fire, so that it may slowly and evenly receive a golden color all over the surface. Now turn it to the other side, moving it in the same way, until it is perfectly toasted. The coals should be clear and hot. Serve it the moment it is done, on a warm plate, or, what is better, a toast-rack; consequently, do not have a piece of bread toasted until the one for whom it is intended is ready to eat it.

“If, as is generally done, a thick slice of bread is hurriedly exposed to a hot fire, and the exterior of the bread is toasted nearly black, the intention of extracting the moisture is defeated, as the heat will then produce no effect on the interior of the slice, which remains as moist as ever. Charcoal is a bad conductor of heat. The overtoasted surface is nothing more or less than a thin layer of charcoal, which prevents the heat from penetrating through the bread. Neither will butter pass through the hard surface: it will remain on it, and if exposed to heat, to melt it in, it will dissolve, and run over it in the form of rancid oil. This is why buttered toast is so often unwholesome.”

Dixie Biscuit (Mrs. Blair).

Mix one tea-spoonful of salt into three pints of flour; put one tea-cupful of milk, with two table-spoonfuls of lard, on the fire to warm. Pour this on two eggs, well beaten; add the flour, with one tea-cupful of home-made yeast. When well mixed, set it in a warm place for about five hours to rise; then form into biscuit; let them rise again. Bake.

Graham Bread.

Make the sponge as for white bread; then knead in Graham flour, only sifting part of it. Add, also, two or three table-spoonfuls of molasses.

Rusks.

Add to about a quart of bread dough the beaten yolks of three eggs, half a cupful of butter, and one cupful of sugar: mix all well together. When formed into little cakes (rather high and slender, and placed very near each other), rub the tops with sugar and water mixed; then sprinkle over dry sugar. This should fill two pans.

Parker House Rolls (Mrs. Samuel Treat).

Ingredients: Two quarts of flour, one pint of milk (measured after boiling), butter the size of an egg, one table-spoonful of sugar, one tea-cupful of home-made yeast, and a little salt.

Make a hole in the flour. Put in the other ingredients, in the following order: sugar, butter, milk, and yeast. Do not stir the ingredients after putting them together. Arrange this at ten o’clock at night; set it in a cool place until ten o’clock the next morning, when mix all together, and knead it fifteen minutes by the clock. Put it in a cool place again until four o’clock P.M., when cut out the rolls, and set each one apart from its neighbor in the pan. Set it for half an hour in a warm place. Bake fifteen minutes.

Beaten Biscuit.

Rub one quarter of a pound of lard into one and a half pounds of flour, adding a pinch of salt. Mix enough milk or water with it to make a stiff dough. Beat the dough well with a rolling-pin for half an hour or more, or until the dough will break when pulled. Little machines come for the purpose of making beaten biscuit, which facilitate the operation. Form into little biscuit, prick them on top several times with a fork, and bake.

Soda and Cream of Tartar Biscuit.

Ingredients: One quart of flour, one tea-spoonful of soda, two tea-spoonfuls cream of tartar, one even tea-spoonful of salt, lard or butter the size of a small egg, and milk.

Put the soda, cream of tartar, and salt on the table; mash them smoothly with a knife, and mix well together; mix them as evenly in the flour as possible; then pass it all through the sieve two or three times. The success of the biscuits depends upon the equal distribution of these ingredients. Mix in the lard or butter (melted) as evenly as possible, taking time to rub it between the open hands, to break any little lumps. Now pour in enough milk to make the dough consistent enough to roll out, mixing it lightly with the ends of the fingers. The quicker it is rolled out, cut, and baked, the better will be the biscuits.

The biscuits are cheaper made with cream of tartar and soda than with baking-powder, yet many make the

Biscuits With Baking-powder.

They are made as in the last receipt, merely substituting two heaping tea-spoonfuls of baking-powder for the cream of tartar and soda, and taking the same care to mix evenly.

These biscuits are nice rolled quite thin (half an inch), and cut with a small cutter two inches in diameter. They may be served hot or cold, and are often used at evening companies, cold, split in two, buttered, and with chopped ham (as for sandwiches) placed between them. They are preferable to bread sandwiches, as they do not dry as quickly, and are, perhaps, neater to handle. These biscuits are especially nice when made with Professor Horsford’s self-raising flour—of course, the raising powders are omitted. The appreciation of hot biscuits is quite a Southern and Western American fancy. They are rarely seen abroad, and are generally considered unwholesome in the Eastern States.

Muffins.

Ingredients: Two eggs, one pint of flour, one tea-cupful of milk or cream, butter half the size of an egg, a little salt, and one tea-spoonful of baking-powder.

Mix the baking-powder and salt in the flour. Beat the eggs; add to the yolks, first, milk, then butter (melted), then flour, then the whites. Beat well after it is all mixed, and bake them immediately in a hot oven, in gem-pans or rings. Take them out of the pans or rings the moment they are done, and send them to the table. The self-raising flour is very nice for making muffins. In using this, of course, the baking-powder should be omitted.

Waffles.

Ingredients: Two eggs, one pint of flour, one and a quarter cupfuls of milk or cream, one even tea-spoonful of yeast-powder, butter or lard the size of a walnut, and salt.

Mix the baking-powder and salt well in the flour, then rub in evenly the butter; next add the beaten yolks and milk mixed, then the beaten whites of the eggs. Bake immediately.

Rice Waffles (Mrs. Gratz Brown).

Ingredients: One and a half pints of boiled rice, one and a half pints of flour, half a tea-cupful of sour milk, half a tea-cupful of sweet milk, one tea-spoonful of soda, salt, three eggs, and butter size of a walnut.

Rice Pancakes

are made as in the last receipt, by adding an extra half-cupful of milk.

Hominy Cake (Mrs. Watts Sherman).

Add a spoonful of butter to two cupfuls of whole hominy (boiled an hour with milk) while it is still hot. Beat three eggs very light, which add to the hominy. Stir in gradually a pint of milk, and, lastly, a pint of corn-meal. Bake in a pan.

This is a very nice breakfast cake. Serve it, with a large napkin under it, on a plate. The sides of the napkin may cover the top of the cake until the moment of serving, which will keep it moist.

Baked Hominy Grits (Mrs. Pope).

Ingredients: One quart of milk, one cupful of hominy grits, two eggs, and salt.

When the milk is salted and boiling, stir in the hominy grits, and boil for twenty minutes. Set it aside to cool thoroughly. Beat the eggs to a stiff froth, and then beat them well and hard into the hominy. Bake half an hour.

Breakfast Puffs, or Pop-overs (Mrs. Hopkins).

Ingredients: Two cupfuls of milk, two cupfuls of flour, two eggs, and an even tea-spoonful of salt.

Beat the eggs separately and well, add the whites last, and then beat all well together. They may be baked in roll-pans, or deep gem-pans, which should be heated on the range, and greased before the batter is put in: they should be filled half full with the batter. Or they may be baked in tea-cups, of which eight would be required for this quantity of batter. When baked, serve immediately. For Graham gems use half Graham flour.

Henriettes for Tea (French Cook), No. 1.

Ingredients: Three eggs beaten separately, three-fourths of a cupful of cream or milk, a scant tea-spoonful of baking-powder, salt, one table-spoonful of brandy, a pinch of cinnamon, enough flour to make them just stiff enough to roll out easily.

Roll them thin as a wafer, cut them into about two-inch squares, or into diamonds, with the paste-jagger, fry them in boiling lard, and sprinkle over pulverized sugar.

Henriettes for Breakfast or Tea (French Cook), No. 2.

Ingredients: Three eggs beaten separately, one cupful of milk, a scant tea-spoonful of baking-powder, salt, one table-spoonful of brandy, and flour enough to make a little thicker than for pancakes.

Pass the batter through a funnel (one-third or one-half inch diameter at end) into hot boiling lard, making rings, or any figures preferred. Do not fry too much at one time. When done and drained, sprinkle over pulverized sugar, and lay them on a plate on a folded napkin. Serve.

Wafer Biscuits.

Rub a piece of butter the size of a large hickory-nut into a pint of sifted flour; sprinkle over a little salt. Mix it into a stiff, smooth paste, with the white of an egg beaten to a froth, and warm milk. Beat the paste with a rolling-pin for half an hour, or longer; the more the dough is beaten, the better are the biscuits. Form the dough into little round balls about the size of a pigeon’s egg; then roll each of them to the size of a saucer. They should be mere wafers in thickness; they can not be too thin. Sprinkle a little flour over the tins. Bake.

These wafers are exceedingly nice to serve with a cheese course, or for invalids to eat with their tea.

Corn Bread.

Ingredients: One cupful of sour milk, one cupful of sweet milk, one table-spoonful of sugar or molasses, one tea-cupful of flour, two heaping tea-cupfuls of corn-meal, one tea-spoonful of salt, one tea-spoonful (not heaping) of soda, one and a half table-spoonfuls of melted lard or butter, and three eggs.

Beat the eggs separately; add the melted butter to the milk; then the sugar, salt, yolks, soda (dissolved in a table-spoonful of warm water); and, lastly, the whites, flour, and corn-meal. Beat it all quickly and well together. Put it immediately in the oven, to bake half an hour.

Hoe Cake.

Pour enough scalding water, or milk, on corn-meal (salted), to make it rather moist. Let it stand an hour, or longer. Put two or three heaping table-spoonfuls on a hot griddle, greased with pork or lard. Smooth over the surface, making the cake about half an inch thick, and of round shape. When browned on one side, turn and brown it on the other. Serve very hot.

These are very nice breakfast cakes, with a savory crust.

Corn Cake (Mrs. Lackland).

Ingredients: One pint of milk, half a pint of Indian meal, four eggs, a scant table-spoonful of butter, salt, and one tea-spoonful of sugar. Pour the milk boiling on the sifted meal. When cold, add the butter (melted), the salt, the sugar, the yolks of the eggs, and, lastly, the whites, well beaten separately. Bake half an hour in a hot oven. It is very nice baked in iron or tin gem-pans, the cups an inch and a half deep.

Fried Corn Mush for Breakfast.

Many slice the mush when cold, and simply sautÉ it in a little hot lard. But as some cooks seem to have as great success in simple dishes as in elaborate ones, I shall consider this as at least one of the little successes taught me by a French cook. Of course, the mush is made by sprinkling the corn-meal into boiling salted water, or after the manner of Harriet Plater, given in the next receipt. It is thoroughly cooked, and made the day before wanted. When cold, it is sliced, each slice dipped in beaten eggs (salted) and bread or cracker crumbs, and fried in boiling-hot lard. One should try this, to know the superiority in the manner of cooking.

Corn Mush

is usually made by sprinkling corn-meal into well-salted boiling water (a pint of corn-meal to three pints of water), and cooking it well. But Harriet Plater (Mrs. Filley’s most skillful cook) says that corn-meal mush is much lighter, and when fried for breakfast, browns better by cooking it as follows:

“Put a quart of water on the fire to boil. Stir a pint of cold milk, with one pint of corn-meal and one tea-spoonful of salt. When the water boils, pour in the mixture gradually, stirring all well together. Let it boil for half an hour, stirring often, to prevent it from burning.”

Oatmeal Porridge.

It seems very simple to make oatmeal porridge, yet it is a very different dish made by different cooks. The ingredients are: One heaping cupful of oatmeal to one quart of boiling water and one tea-spoonful of salt. Boil twenty minutes.

The water should be salted and boiling when the meal is sprinkled in with one hand, while it is lightly stirred in with the other. When all mixed, it should boil without afterward being stirred more than is necessary to keep it from burning at the bottom, and to mingle the grains two or three times, so that they may all be evenly cooked. If much stirred, the porridge will be starchy or waxy, and poor in flavor. But the puffing of the steam through the grains without much stirring swells each one separately, and, when done, the porridge is light, and quite consistent. This same manner of cooking is applicable as well to all other grains.

Mother Johnson’s Pancakes (Adirondacks).

These are famous pancakes, and, like every other good thing, there is a little secret in the preparation.

Enough flour is added to a quart of sour milk to make a rather thick batter. The secret is that it is left to stand overnight, instead of being finished at once. It may even stand to advantage for twenty-four hours. However, if it is mixed at night, the next morning two well-beaten eggs and salt are to be added at the same time with half a tea-spoonful of soda, dissolved in a table-spoonful of warm water. Cook immediately.

Sirup.

Mix two table-spoonfuls of water to two cupfuls of brown sugar and one even table-spoonful of butter. Let it boil about five minutes.

Buckwheat Cakes.

Scald two gills of Indian meal in one quart of boiling water. Add a little salt. When cool, add one gill of yeast, and stir in enough buckwheat flour to make a thin batter. Let it rise overnight. If by chance it is a little sour, just before cooking add one-fourth of a tea-spoonful of soda, dissolved in half a cupful of boiling water. Or,

They may be made in the same manner without the Indian meal, merely adding the yeast to a quart of lukewarm water, and making the batter with buckwheat flour alone.

Pancakes, with Flour or Corn-meal.

Stir one or two cupfuls of cream or milk into two beaten eggs; add flour or corn-meal enough to make a thin batter. If the milk is sweet, add one tea-spoonful of yeast-powder; if it is sour, add, instead of the yeast-powder, half a tea-spoonful of soda, dissolved in a little warm water.

Pancakes, with Bread-crumbs.

Soak the bread-crumbs, then drain them. To two cupfuls of bread-crumbs add one cupful of flour or corn-meal, one egg, and milk enough to make a thin batter. If the milk is sweet, add a tea-spoonful of yeast-powder; if sour, half a tea-spoonful of soda, dissolved in a table-spoonful of warm water.

Strawberry Short-cake (Mrs. Pope).

Ingredients: One quart of flour, two heaping tea-spoonfuls of yeast-powder, half a tea-spoonful of salt, butter size of an egg, milk, two quarts of strawberries. Mix the baking-powder into the flour, then rub in the butter (in the same manner as described for biscuits, page 72). Add enough milk to make a soft dough—rather softer than for biscuits. Spread this on two pie-tins. Bake in a quick oven.

When the cakes are done, let them partly cool. Cut around the edges, and split them. Spread them with butter, then with one quart of mashed strawberries, with plenty of sugar; then put between them the other quart of whole strawberries, sprinkled with sugar. Serve a pitcher of cream with a strawberry short-cake. The cake in this form can be cut like a pie. It is a good summer breakfast as well as tea dish. Or,

It can be made with sour milk, viz.: to two tea-cupfuls of sour milk add a tea-spoonful of soda, then three-fourths of a tea-cupful of butter or lard, partly melted, and enough flour to make a soft dough. Roll it into thin cakes large enough to fill the pan in which they are to be baked. When baked, split, and butter them while hot. Lay on a plate half of the cake, put on a layer of well-sugared strawberries, then the other half, then more strawberries, and so on, until there are several layers. Or,

These cakes can be made in the same way with currants, blackberries, cut peaches, chopped pine-apples, raspberries, etc.

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