House and Home Papers: Seventh EditionStowe, Harriet Beecher
General
House and Home Papers: Seventh Edition
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Home economics
There is, however, one species of yeast, much used in some parts of the
country, against which I have to enter my protest. It is called
salt-risings, or milk-risings, and is made by mixing flour, milk, and a
little salt together, and leaving them to ferment. The bread thus
produced is often very attractive, when new and made with great care. It
is white and delicate, with fine, even air-cells. It has, however, when
kept, some characteristics which remind us of the terms in which our
old-English Bible describes the effect of keeping the manna of the
ancient Israelites, which we are informed, in words more explicit than
agreeable, “stank, and bred worms.” If salt-rising bread does not fulfil
the whole of this unpleasant description, it certainly does emphatically
a part of it. The smell which it has in baking, and when more than a day
old, suggests the inquiry, whether it is the saccharine or the putrid
fermentation with which it is raised. Whoever breaks a piece of it after
a day or two will often see minute filaments or clammy strings drawing
out from the fragments, which, with the unmistakable smell, will cause
him to pause before consummating a nearer acquaintance.
The fermentation of flour by means of brewer’s or distiller’s yeast
produces, if rightly managed, results far more palatable and wholesome.
The only requisites for success in it are, first, good materials, and,
second, great care in a few small things. There are certain low-priced
or damaged kinds of flour which can never by any kind of domestic
chemistry be made into good bread; and to those persons whose stomachs
forbid them to eat gummy, glutinous paste, under the name of bread,
there is no economy in buying these poor brands, even at half the price
of good flour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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