THE BEST OVEN TO USE.
A gas-cooker is undoubtedly the best for paper-bag cookery, as the ease with which the heat is regulated, and a steady even degree maintained, the little attention it requires while the food is cooking, make it ideal for all ways of preparing food, but especially for the method now under consideration. Gas is absolutely perfection for paper-bag cookery. But all houses are not supplied with gas, and even if they are, the economical housewife may prefer to cook by coal fires, at all events in winter, when the kitchen-range is alight all day long, or when it is going for the purpose of getting hot water for baths.
An ordinary coal heated kitchen-range will answer very well for paper-bag cookery, if a little care and attention be given to the matter. The cook must firmly impress on her mind that the bags must not be laid on a solid baking sheet, but on a wire grid, which may be cheaply acquired at an ironmonger's; that the oven must be heated to 220° Fahr. before the food is put into it—a cooking thermometer is not an expensive item; and that, though the heat may be lessened after some twenty minutes, the fire must not be allowed to go down and then be built up again to complete the cookery.
If the bags are put on a hot baking sheet, the cooking will be a failure, because it is necessary for the hot air to circulate round the food and completely surround it; besides, the bags will burst as soon as they are laid on a hot solid surface.
When cooking in a gas oven, it must be remembered that the gas must be lighted and left full on for ten minutes before the food is put in, and also that the lower grid must not be put in the lowest groove, or the bags will catch fire from being too near the flame. The top grid should be put in the groove nearest the top of the oven, if that will allow the bags to lie conveniently on it, and the second grid as near the first as may be convenient.
A wire grid from the ironmonger's may be added to the two usually supplied with the gas-cooker; in some ovens there is room for two additional ones. After about ten to fifteen minutes, the gas may be turned half-way down, and this degree of heat steadily maintained till the cooking is completed.
Sometimes, when people are living in apartments, there is a supply of gas, but no cooker. In such a case, it would be easy to buy a gas ring and tubing to attach it to a gas jet. Over the ring a tin oven, such as can be had cheaply from most ironmongers, should be placed, and it will be found that a paper-bag dinner will emerge most successfully from it.
Even if nothing more than a paraffin stove is to be had, still the paper-bag cook need not despair. Longer time will be needed to get the oven placed on top of a paraffin stove to the necessary degree of heat, but by remembering this, and maintaining the same steady heat, paper-bag cookery may be managed much more satisfactorily in such an oven than ordinary cooking could possibly be.
A HOME-MADE GRID.