Miss Beecher's Housekeeper and Healthkeeper: Containing Five Hundred Receipes for Economical and Healthful Cooking; also, Many Directions for Securing Health and HappinessBeecher, Catharine Esther
General
Miss Beecher's Housekeeper and Healthkeeper: Containing Five Hundred Receipes for Economical and Healthful Cooking; also, Many Directions for Securing Health and Happiness
Beecher, Catharine Esther
Cooking; Home economics
If bread rises too long, it becomes sour. This is discovered by
making a sudden opening and applying the nose, and the sourness
will be noticed as different from the odor of proper lightness.
Practice is needed in this. If bread is light too soon for the oven,
knead it awhile, and set it in a cool place. Sour bread can be
remedied somewhat by working in soda dissolved in water—about half a
tea-spoonful for each quart of flour. Many spoil bread by too much
flour, others by not kneading enough, and others by allowing it to
rise too much.
The goodness of bread depends on the quality of the flour. Some
flour will not make good bread in any way. New and good flour has a
yellowish tinge, and when pressed in the hand is adhesive. Poor flour
is dry, and will not retain form when pressed. Poor flour is bad
economy, for it does not make as nutritious bread as does good flour.
Bread made with milk sometimes causes indigestion to invalids and to
children with weak digestion.
Take loaves out of the pans, and set them sidewise, and not flat, on a
table. Wrapping in a cloth makes the bread clammy.
Bread is better in small loaves. Let your pans be of tin (or better,
of iron), eight inches long, three inches high, three inches wide at
the bottom, and flaring so as to be four inches wide at the top. This
size makes more tender crust, and cuts more neatly than larger loaves.
Oil the pans with a swab and sweet butter or lard. They should be well
washed and dried, or black and rancid oil will gather.
All these kinds of bread can be baked in biscuit-form; and, by adding
water and eggs, made into griddle-cakes. Bread having potatoes in it
keeps moist longest, but turns sour soonest.
=Bread of Middlings or Unbolted Flour.=—Take four quarts of coarse
flour, one quart of warm water, one cup of yeast, two tea-spoonfuls
of salt, one spoonful of melted lard or butter, two cups of sugar or
molasses, and half a tea-spoonful of soda. Mix thoroughly, and bake in
pans the same as the bread of fine flour. It is better to be kneaded
rather than made soft with a spoon.
=Bread raised with Water only.=—Many persons like bread made either of
fine or coarse flour, and raised with water only. Success in making
this kind depends on the proper quantity of water, quick beating, the
heating of very small pans, and very quick baking. There are cast-iron
patties made for this purpose, and also small, coarse earthen cups.
The following is the rule, but it must be modified by trying:
_Recipe._—To one quart of unbolted flour put about one quart, or a
little less, of hot water. Beat it very quickly, put it in hot pans,
and bake in a hot oven. White flour may be used in place of coarse,
and the quantity ascertained by trial. When right, there is after
baking little except a crust, which is sweet and crisp.
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