DIVISION I.—BREAD.
The true idea of bread is that coarse or cracked and unbolted meal, formed into a mass of dough by means of water, and immediately baked in loaves of greater or less thickness, according to the fancy.
Some use bolted meal; most raise bread by fermentation; many use salt; some saleratus, or carbonate of potash; and, in the country, many use milk instead of water to form the paste. I might also mention several other additions, which, like saleratus, it is becoming fashionable to make.
All these things are a departure, greater or less, from the true idea of a bread; and bread made with any of these changes, is so much the less perfectly adapted to the promotion of health, happiness, and longevity.
Bolting is objectionable, because bread made from bolted meal, especially when eaten hot, is more apt, when the digestive powers are not very vigorous, to form a paste, which none but very strong stomachs can entirely overcome. Besides, it takes out a part of the sweetness, or life, as it is termed, of the flour. They who say fine flour bread is sweetest, are led into this mistake by the force of habit, and by the fact that the latter comes in contact, more readily than coarse bread, with the papillæ of the tongue, and seems to have more taste to it because it touches at more points.
Raising bread by inducing fermentation, wastes a part of the saccharine matter; and the more it is raised, the greater is the waste. By lessening the attraction of cohesion, it makes it more easy of digestion, it is true; but the loss of nutriment and of pleasure to the true appetite more than counterbalances this. Bakers, in striving to get a large loaf, rob the bread of most of its sweetness.
Salt is objectionable, because it hardens the bread, and renders it more difficult of digestion. Our ancestors, in this country, did not use it at all; and many are the families that will not use it now.
Those who use salt in bread, tell us how flat it would taste without it. This idea of flatness has two sources. 1. We have so long given our bread the taste of salt, as we have most other things, that it seems tasteless without it. 2. The flatness spoken of in an article of food is oftentimes the true taste of the article, unaltered by any stimulus. If any two articles need to be stimulated with salt, however, it is rice and beans—bread never.
If saleratus is used in bread where no acidity is present, it is a medicine; or, if you please, a poison both to the stomach and intestines. If it meets and neutralizes an acid either in the bread-tray or the stomach, the residuum is a new chemical compound diffused through the bread, which is more or less injurious, according to its nature and quantity.
Milk is objectionable on the score of its tendency to render the bread more indigestible than when it was wet with water, and perhaps by rendering it too nutritious. For good bread without the milk is already too nutritious for health, if eaten exclusively, for a long time. That man should not live on bread alone, is as true physically as it is morally.
No bread should be eaten while new and hot—though the finer it is, the worse for health when thus eaten. Old bread, heated again, is less hurtful. But if eaten both new and hot, and with butter or milk, or any thing which soaks and fills it, the effect is very bad. Mrs. Howland, in her Economical Housekeeper, says much about ripe bread. And I should be glad to say as much, had I room, about ripe bread, and about the true philosophy of bread and bread-making, as she has.
Section A.—Bread of the first order.
This is made of coarse meal—as coarse as it can well be ground, provided the kernels are all broken. The grain should be well washed, and it may be ground in the common way, or according to the oriental mode, in hand-mills. The latter mode is preferable, because you can thus have it fresh. Meal is somewhat injured by being kept long ground.
If great pains is not taken to have the grain clean when ground, it needs to be passed through a coarse sieve, that all foreign bodies may be carefully separated. The hulls of corn, and especially the husks of oats and buckwheat, should also be separated in some way. In no case, however, should meal be bolted. Good health requires that we eat the innutritious and coarser parts as well as the finer.
Receipt 1.—Take a sufficient quantity of good, recent wheat meal;[25] wet it well, but not too soft, with pure water; form it into thin cakes, and bake it as hard as the teeth will bear. Remember, however, that the saliva aids the teeth greatly, especially when you masticate your food slowly. The cakes should be very thin—the thinner the better. Many, however, prefer them an inch thick, or even more.
Receipt 2.—Oat meal prepared in the same manner. Procure what is called the Scotch kiln dried oat meal, if you can. No matter if it is manufactured in New England, if it is well done.
Receipt 3.—Indian meal cakes, otherwise called hoe cakes, or Johnny cakes, are next in point of value to bread made of wheat and oats. They are most healthy, however, in cold weather.
Receipt 4.—Rye cakes come next. Warm instead of cold water is often used to wet all the above. Some even choose to scald the meal. Fancy may be indulged in this particular, only you must remember that warm water in warm weather may soon give rise, if the mass stands long, to a degree of fermentation, which, for the best bread, should be avoided.
Receipt 5.—Barley meal bread comes next in order in the unleavened series. In regard to this species of bread, however, I do not speak from experience, but from report.
Receipt 6.—Of millet bread I know still less. Cakes made of it, as above, must certainly be wholesome.
Receipt 7.—Buckwheat cakes are last in the series of the best breads. The meal is always too fine, and hence makes heavy bread, except when hot. Few use it without fermentation.
Unleavened bread may be made as above, of all the various kinds of grain, finely ground; but it is apt to be heavy, whereas, when made properly, of coarse meal, it is only firm, never heavy; that is, it never has a lead-like appearance. They may make and use it who have iron stomachs.
Section B.—Bread of the second order.
This consists essentially of mixtures of the various coarse meals. True it is, that made or mixed food is objectionable; but the union of one farinaceous substance with another to form bread, can hardly be considered a mixture. It is, essentially, the addition of farina to farina, with some change in the proportion of the gluten and other properties.
Receipt 1.—Wheat meal and Indian, in about the proportion of two parts of wheat to one of Indian.
Receipt 2.—Wheat meal and oat meal, about equal parts.
Receipt 3.—Wheat meal and Indian, equal parts.
Receipt 4.—Wheat meal and rye meal; two parts, quarts, or pounds of the former to one of the latter.
Receipt 5.—Rye and Indian, equal parts of each.
Receipt 6.—Rye, two thirds; Indian, one third.
Receipt 7.—Wheat meal and rice. Three quarts of wheat meal to one pint of good clean rice, boiled till it is soft.
Receipt 8.—Three parts of wheat meal to one of Indian.
Receipt 9.—Four parts of wheat to one of Indian.
The proportion of the ingredients above may be varied to a great extent. I have inserted some of the best. The following are irregulars, but may as well be mentioned here as any where.
Receipt 10.—Two quarts of wheat meal to one pound of well boiled ripe beans, made soft by pounding or otherwise.
Receipt 11.—Seven pounds of wheat meal and two and a half pounds of good, mealy, and well boiled and pounded potatoes.
Receipt 12.—Equal parts of coarse meal from rye, barley, and buckwheat. This is chiefly used in Westphalia.
Receipt 13.—Seven parts of wheat meal (as in Receipt 11), with two pounds of split peas boiled to a soup, and used to wet the flour.
Receipt 14.—Wheat meal and apples, in the proportion of about three of the former (some use two) to one of the latter. The apples must be first pared and cored, and stewed or baked. See my "Young Housekeeper," seventh edition, page 396.
Receipt 15.—Wheat meal and boiled chestnuts; three quarts of the former to one of the latter.
Receipt 16.—Wheat meal, four quarts, and one quart of well boiled and pounded marrow squash.
Receipt 17.—Wheat, corn, or barley meal; three quarts to one quart of powdered comfrey root. This is inserted from the testimony of Rev. E. Rich, of Troy, N. H.
Receipt 18.—Wheat meal, three pounds, to one pound of pounded corn, boiled and pounded green. This is the most doubtful form which has yet been mentioned.
Receipt 19.—Receipt 7 describes rice bread. Bell, in his work on Diet and Regimen, says the best and most economical rice bread is made thus: Wheat meal, three pounds; rice, well boiled, one pound—wet with the water in which the rice is boiled.
I wish to say here, once for all, that any kind of bread may be salted, if you will have salt, except the patented bread mentioned in the beginning of the next section, which is salted in the process. Molasses in small quantity may also be added, if preferred.
Section C.—Bread of the third kind.
Of this there are several kinds. Those which are made by a simple effervescence, provided the residuum is not injurious, are best, and shall accordingly be placed first in order. Next will follow various kinds of bread made by the ordinary process of fermentation, salting, etc.
Receipt 1.—Wheat meal, seven pounds; carbonate of soda or saleratus[26] three quarters of an ounce to one ounce; water, two and three quarter pints; muriatic acid, 420 to 560 drops. Mix the soda with the meal as intimately as possible, by means of a wooden spoon or stick. Then mix the acid and water, and add it slowly to the mass, stirring it constantly. Make three loaves of it, and bake it in a quick oven.
Receipt 2.—Wheat meal, one pound; sesquicarbonate of soda, forty grains; muriatic acid, fifty drops; cold water, half a pint, or a sufficient quantity. Mix in the same way, and with the same caution, as in Receipt 1. Make one loaf of it, and bake in a quick oven.[27]
Receipt 3.—Wheat meal, one quart; cream of tartar, two tea-spoonfuls; saleratus, one tea-spoonful; and two and a half teacups full of milk. Mix well, and bake thirty minutes. If the meal is fresh, as it ought to be, the milk may be omitted.
Receipt 4.—Coarse rye meal, Indian meal, and oat meal, may be formed into bread in nearly a similar manner. So, in fact, may fine meal and all sorts of mixtures.
Receipt 5.—Professor Silliman more than intimates, that carbonic acid gas might be made to inflate bread, without either an effervescence or a fermentation. The plan is, to force carbonic acid, by some means or other, into the mass of dough, or, as bakers call it, the sponge. I do not know that the experiment has yet been made.
Receipt 6.—Coarse Indian meal may be formed into small, rather thin loaves, and prepared and baked as in Receipt 3.
Let us now proceed to common fermented bread:
Receipt 7.—Wheat meal, six pounds; good yeast, a teacup full; and a sufficient quantity of pure water. Knead thoroughly. Bake it in small loaves, unless you have a very strong heat.
Receipt 8.—Another way: Wheat meal, six quarts; molasses and yeast, each a teacup full. Mould into loaves half the thickness you mean they shall be after they are baked. Place them in the pans, in a temperature which will cause a moderate fermentation. When risen enough, place them in the oven. A strong heat is required.
Receipt 9.—Rye bread may be made in a similar way. It must, however, be well kneaded, to secure an intimate mixture with the yeast. Does not require quite so strong a heat as the former.
Receipt 10.—Oat meal bread may be prepared by mixing good kiln dried oat meal, a little salt and warm water, and a spoonful of yeast. Beat till it is quite smooth, and rather a thick batter; cover and let it stand to rise; then bake it on a hot iron plate, or on a bake stove. Be careful not to burn it.
Receipt 11.—Barley, or black bread, as it is called in Europe, makes a wholesome article of food. It may be fermented or unfermented.
Receipt 12.—Corn bread is sometimes made thus: Six pints meal, four pints water, one spoonful of salt; mix well, and bake in oblong rolls two inches thick. Bake in a hot oven.
It should be added to this division of my subject, that in baking bread sweet oil may be used (a vegetable oil) as a substitute for animal oil, to prevent the bread from adhering too closely. Or you may sift a quantity of Indian meal into the pans. If you use sweet, or olive oil, be sure to get that which is not rancid. Much of the olive oil of the shops is unfit to be used.