Household Papers and StoriesStowe, Harriet Beecher
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Household Papers and Stories
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Didactic fiction; Home economics -- Fiction; Short stories
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
fulfill 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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