Cream Cheese.

Stir a little salt into a pan of “loppered” cream. Pour into a linen bag, and let it drain three days, changing the bag every day. Then pack into a wooden cup or mould with holes in the bottom, and press two hours. Wet the mould with cold water before putting in the cream-curd. Wrapped in soft white paper—two or three folds of tissue paper will do—to exclude the air, they will keep in a cool place for a week.

This is the cheese sold in this country under the name of Neufchatel.

BREAD.

If eminence of importance entitled a subject to pre-eminence of position, that of which we are now about to speak should have stood foremost in this work. It is not a pleasant thing to think or write about, but it is a stubborn fact, that upon thousands of tables, in otherwise comfortable homes, good bread is an unknown phenomenon. I say phenomenon, because it would indeed be a marvellous estrangement of cause and effect were indifferent flour, unskillfully mixed with flat yeast, badly risen and negligently baked, to result in that pride of the notable housekeeper—light, sweet, wholesome bread. I know a household where sour, stiff bread is the rule, varied several times during the week by muffins scented and colored with soda, clammy biscuit, and leathery griddle-cakes; another where the bread is invariably over-risen, and consequently tasteless, sometimes slightly acid; yet another in which home-made bread is not used at all because it is “so troublesome and uncertain,” the mistress preferring to feed her family, growing children and all, upon the vari-colored sponges bought at the bakers—sponges inflated with sal volatile, flavorless, and dry as chips when a day old, and too often betraying, in the dark streaks running through the interior of the loaf, want of cleanliness in the kneader. Yet these are all well-to-do people, who submit to these abominations partly because they do not know how badly off they are—chiefly because it is their way of doing, and they see no reason for changing. “I have been a housekeeper for thirty years, and have always mixed my bread just so,” retorted a mistress once, when I mildly set forth the advantages of “setting a sponge” over-night. “I put in flour, yeast, and milk if I have it, and give them a good stir; then set the dough down to rise. Our folks don’t fancy very light bread. There don’t seem to be any substance in it—so to speak. Mine generally turns out pretty nice. It’s all luck, after all, about bread.”

“I’m told you have a receipt for making bread,” laughed another to me; “I never heard of such a thing in my life, and I’ve been keeping house eighteen years. So I thought I’d call and ask you for it—just as a curiosity, you know. I want to see what it is like.”

I wisely kept my thoughts to myself, and dictated the receipt, which she jotted down in a memorandum-book laughing all the while at the “excellent joke.”

“You really use this?” she demanded, when this was done.

“I do. I have used no other for many years.”

“And the bread I ate upon your table, the other night, was made according to this?”

Again an affirmative answer.

“I guess your cook could tell another story,” rejoined the skeptic. “You can’t make me believe that bread is made by rule. I put my materials together anyhow, and I have as good luck as most of my neighbors.”

I regarded my visitor as an impertinent simpleton; but I have been amazed, in subsequent years, at finding that her creed is that of hundreds of housewives more or less sensible. “Luck” rules the baking, and upon the shoulders of this Invisible are laid the deficiencies of the complacent cook. Cheap flour and laziness are at the bottom of more mishaps in the bread line than any other combination of circumstances. From the inferior grades of flour, it is possible to make tolerable biscuit, crumpets, and muffins, plain pastry, and very good griddle-cakes. You cannot, by any stretch of art, produce excellent bread from poor flour. It is no economy to purchase it for this purpose. It is judicious to lay in two barrels at a time, and to use the best only for the semi- or tri-weekly baking.

Chiefest then among the conditions to good bread, I place good “family” flour—dry, elastic, and odorless. Whiteness is a secondary consideration, although, to American eyes, this is a recommendation. A little experience will teach you to detect the signs that foretell satisfactory baking-days, and vice versâ. If in handling the flour you discern a heaviness like that of ground plaster; if in squeezing a handful tightly you discover that it retains the imprint of palm and fingers, and rolls back into the tray a compact ball or roll; if it is in the least musty, or sour, use it very sparingly in your trial-baking, for the chances are as ten to one that you will head the barrel up again and return it to your grocer.

Sometimes new flour can be ripened for use by sifting enough for each baking into a large tray, and exposing it to the hot sun for some hours, or by setting it upon the kitchen hearth for the same time. And it not unfrequently happens that flour improves greatly after the barrel has been open for several days or weeks. It dries out and becomes lighter, more elastic. Next in importance to the quality of the flour is that of the yeast. This should be light in color and lively, effervescing easily when shaken, and emitting an odor like weak ammonia. If dull or sour, it is bad. In cities it is easiest, perhaps cheapest, to buy yeast from a brewery or bakery, exercising your discrimination as to quality. Unless you can satisfy yourself in this regard, you had better make your own. I can confidently recommend the receipts given in this work as easy and safe, having tried them in my own family.

Novices in bread-making, and many who should have learned better by long experience, fall into a sad mistake in the consistency of the dough. It should be mixed as soft as it can be handled. Bread will rise sooner and higher, be lighter and more digestible, and keep fresh much longer, if this rule be followed. Stiff bread is close in texture, often waxy to the teeth, and after a day or so becomes very hard.

Set the dough to rise in a moderately warm place, and keep it in an even temperature. There is force in the old lament—“My bread took cold, last night.” Cold arrests the process of fermentation. There is a chance, should this occur, that a removal to a more genial atmosphere and careful nursing may cure the congestion, should it be only partial. Too much heat carries forward the work too rapidly. In this case, you will find your dough puffy and sour. Correct the latter evil by dissolving a little soda or saleratus in hot water, and working it well in.

Knead your bread faithfully and from all sides, until it rebounds like india-rubber after a smart blow of the fist upon the centre of the mass.

The oven should not be too hot. If you cannot hold your bare arm within it while you count thirty, it is too quick. Keep the heat steady after the bread goes in. Too much fire at first, and rapidly cooling, produce the effect upon the bread which is technically called “slack-baked,” i. e., the inside of the loaf is never properly done. Practice and intelligent observation will, in time, make you an adept in the management of your ovens. If the bread rises rapidly while baking, and the crust begins to form before the lower part of the loaf is baked, cover the top with clean paper until you are ready to brown it.

Grate away the burned portions of the crust, should there be such. This is better than chipping with a knife. One of the best bread-makers I know bakes in round pans, each loaf by itself, and grates the whole outer surface, top, bottom, and sides, quickly and lightly, toning down the brown to a uniform and pleasing tint. Tilt your loaves upon the edge, the lower part resting upon the table, the upper supported by the wall or other upright object, and throw a coarse dry cloth over them until they cool. This position allows the air to get at all sides, and prevents “sweating.” A tin bread-box is best, with a cloth at bottom and enwrapping the loaves.

Yeast (Hop.) ✠

Peel the potatoes, and put them with the hop-bag into a saucepan containing two quarts cold water. Cover and boil until the potatoes break and fall apart. Take these out with a perforated skimmer, leaving the water still boiling, mash them fine with a potato-beetle, and work in the flour and sugar. Moisten this gradually with the boiling hop tea, stirring it to a smooth paste. When all the tea has been mixed in, set it aside to cool. While still slightly warm, add four tablespoonfuls of lively yeast, and turn all into a large open vessel to “work.” Keep this in a warm place until it ceases to bubble up, or until next day. In summer it will work well in a few hours. When quite light, put in earthen jars with small mouths, in which fit corks, or bottle it, and remove to ice-house or cellar. It will keep good for a fortnight—longer in winter.

When you wish to use it for baking, send a small vessel to the cellar for the desired quantity, and re-cork at once. A half-hour in a hot kitchen may spoil it.

Yeast (Self-working).

Tie the hops in a coarse muslin bag, and boil one hour in four quarts of water. Let it cool to lukewarmness before removing the bag. Wet with the tepid liquor—a little at a time—the flour, making to a smooth paste. Put in the sugar and salt, beat up the batter three minutes before adding the rest of the tea. Set it away for two days in an open bowl covered with a thin cloth, in a closet which is moderately and evenly warm.

On the third day peel, boil, and mash the potatoes, and when entirely free from lumps and specks, stir in gradually the thickened hop-liquor. Let it stand twelve hours longer in the bowl, stirring often, and keeping it in the warm kitchen. Then bottle or put away in corked jars, which must be perfectly sweet and freshly scalded. This will keep a month in a cool cellar. It is more troublesome to make it than other kinds of yeast, but it needs no other “rising” to excite fermentation, and remains good longer than that made in the usual way.

Yeast (Potato.) ✠

Peel and boil the potatoes until they break. Leaving the water on the fire, take them out and mash fine with the flour and sugar, wetting gradually with the hot water until it is all used. When lukewarm, add a gill of good yeast, and set aside in an open vessel and warm place to ferment. When it ceases to effervesce, bottle and set in ice-house.

This yeast is very nice and white, and is preferred by many who dislike the bitter taste of hops. It is also convenient to make when hops cannot be obtained.