A Lady's Life on a Farm in ManitobaHall, M. G. C. (Mary Georgina Caroline)
History
A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba
Hall, M. G. C. (Mary Georgina Caroline)
Frontier and pioneer life -- Manitoba; Manitoba -- Description and travel
We are longing to make bread, which takes up a great deal of our
factotum's time, as it has to be set over night and kneaded three
or four times the following day; but are begged to defer that
amusement until within a few days of our departure, as it would so
entirely upset our American trip if we had to attend A----'s
obsequies. The bread is perfectly delicious, so light and so white
in colour. The flour is excellent. It is not made with brewers
yeast, but with a yeast gem dissolved in warm water, to which is
added a handful of dried hops boiled beforehand for about ten
minutes, and strained. To that is added a cupful of flour a
teaspoonful of salt, and one of sugar, and the whole is put into a
warm place to ferment; when fermented, which takes about twelve
hours, into a cool place, where it will remain good and sweet some
time.
_A Receipt for Bread-Making_.
Put ten large spoonfuls of flour in a breadpan, and add enough
warm water to make it into a thin batter, add half a pint of
yeast, mix well, and, having covered the bread-pan with a cloth,
put it in a warm place near the stove over night. During the night
it should rise and settle again. In the morning add enough flour
to make it in into a thick dough, and knead it on a bread-board
for ten minutes. Put it back into pan for two hours and let it
rise again. Grease your baking-tins, knead your dough again, and
then fill the tins half full, put them close to the stove to rise,
and when they have risen thoroughly, grease the tops of your
loaves with a little butter (preventing the crust breaking and
giving it a nice brown colour) and put them into the oven and bake
for an hour to an hour and a quarter.
As E---- had not Mrs. G---- to wash up with her, she enlisted one
of the men, and it was very funny to see him in a hat three times
too big for his head, pipe in his mouth, sleeves turned up, drying
the dishes and putting a polish on them. Talking of hats, E----
has at last got one and a half, it literally covers even her
shoulders, and at midday she declares she is as much in shade as
under a Japanese umbrella; for trimming a rope is coiled round the
crown, the only way to make it stay on the head. Of her gloves
there is only the traditional one left; the other is among the
various articles we have left on the prairie, bumped out of the
buggy one day when she took them off to take care of them in a
shower of rain.
That driving on the prairie is loathsome, but if we want to get
about at all we must do it, as we don't like the riding horses. At
the present moment we have got one of the plough animals, which is
rideable. The poor beast was frightened one night three weeks ago,
during a fearful storm of thunder and lightning, and ran into the
barb wire, wounding itself horridly on the shoulders and neck. The
skin had to be sewn up, and it cannot wear a collar for the
present so we have it to ride if we like. It is not a slug like
the other two.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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