To be sure a teaspoonful of saleratus will sweeten it; dissolve it in warm water, and mix it in so there will be no yellow spots; but, if used, it takes away the fresh sweetness of the bread. Making bread is not like cake or pie-making—it demands close attention; will not be neglected without injury. It requires some brains to make good bread, and that is one reason why so many families rarely know what the best quality of bread is. If it sours, turn in the saleratus; if it is half-kneaded, and half-risen, and the oven is ready, why, bake it, and thus very poor bread is the result! Bread cannot be set aside for dish-washing or sweeping. It must be of the first consequence.
When it is risen for a second time, and blubbers appear, flour your moulding-board, turn out the dough, cut it into as many parts as you desire loaves of bread, and knead, pound, or cut each loaf well; then have your bread-pans buttered, and put in the dough, kneading it into the corners of the pan. Prick it all over with a fork, place near the stove for fifteen or twenty minutes, or until it has filled the pans to the brim. Have your oven so hot, that if a sprinkling of flour is thrown in, it will brown quickly, but not burn; then set in the pans. Three quarters of an hour, in a properly heated oven, will bake bread. Don’t burn your crusts, but watch the oven, and in twenty minutes after putting them in, look at them and turn the pans round, for usually one side of an oven bakes the fastest. When it is baked, take it from the pans directly, else the sides will become moistened and clammy. Spread a clean towel on the table or shelves, and stand the bread on it. If the crust is too thick and brown, wrap the loaves in a clean towel wet with cold water; this softens it.
If these directions are closely followed, and a good brand of flour is used, no girl can fail to make A No. 1 bread.
No lady can teach her servants unless she has learned the alphabet of cookery herself, and bread may be called the A B C’s of the kitchen.
1.—WAFFLES.
Take one quart of milk; melt in the milk a large spoonful of butter; beat up four eggs, and add to this mixture a little salt; add to the slightly warm milk a small gill of yeast, flour sufficient to make a batter just right for a waffle iron, or a little thinner to bake on a griddle iron. The batter for waffles is also nice baked in tins as muffins. Some elder person can direct, the first time you make this recipe, the proper thickness of the batter.
2.—A CREAM TOMATO SOUP.
Twelve tomatoes, skinned and cut up, cook thirty minutes (or a quart of canned tomatoes, ten minutes will cook it). When cooked, stir in quarter of a teaspoonful of soda; when done foaming put in two large crackers, rolled fine; one quart of milk, salt and pepper to taste; stir in a piece of butter nearly the size of an egg; let it all boil up once, then serve for dinner.