Oatmeal bread.—Mix a quart of well-cooked oatmeal mush with a pint of water, beating it perfectly smooth; add a cupful of liquid yeast and flour to make a stiff batter. Cover, and let it rise. When light, add sufficient flour to mold; knead as soft as possible, for twenty or thirty minutes; shape into four or more loaves, let it rise again, and bake.
Milk Yeast Bread.—Prepare the yeast the day before by scalding three heaping teaspoonfuls of fresh cornmeal with boiling milk. Set in a warm place until light (from seven to ten hours); then put in a cool place until needed for use. Start the bread by making a rather thick batter with one cupful of warm water, one teaspoonful of the prepared yeast, and white flour. Put in a warm place to rise. When light, add to it a cupful of flour scalded with a cupful of boiling milk, and enough more flour to make the whole into a rather stiff batter. Cover, and allow it to rise. When again well risen, add flour enough to knead. Knead well; shape into a loaf; let it rise, and bake. Three or four cupfuls of white flour will be needed for all purposes with the amount of liquid given; more liquid and flour may be added in forming the second sponge if a larger quantity of bread is desired. In preparing both yeast and bread, all utensils used should first be sterilized by scalding in hot sal-soda water.
Graham Salt-Rising Bread.—Put two tablespoonfuls of milk into a half-pint cup, add boiling water to fill the cup half full, one half teaspoonful of sugar, one fourth teaspoonful of salt, and white flour to make a rather stiff batter. Let it rise over night. In the morning, when well risen, add a cup and a half of warm water, or milk scalded and cooled, and sufficient white flour to form a rather stiff batter. Cover, and allow it again to rise. When light, add enough sifted Graham flour to knead. When well kneaded, shape into a loaf; allow it to become light again in the pan, and bake. All utensils used should be first well sterilized by scalding in hot sal-soda water.
UNFERMENTED BREADS.
The earliest forms of bread were made without fermentation. Grain was broken as fine as possible by pounding on smooth stones, made into dough with pure water, thoroughly kneaded, and baked in some convenient way. Such was the "unleavened breads" or "Passover cakes" of the Israelites. In many countries this bread is the only kind used. Unleavened bread made from barley and oats is largely used by the Irish and Scotch peasantry. In Sweden an unleavened bread is made of rye meal and water, flavored with anise seed, and baked in large, thin cakes, a foot or more in diameter.
Mexican Woman Making Tortillas
Some savage tribes subsists chiefly upon excellent corn bread, made simply of meal and water. Unleavened bread made of corn, called tortillas, forms the staple diet of the Mexican Indians. The corn, previously softened by soaking in lime water, is ground to a fine paste between a stone slab and roller called a metate, then patted and tossed from hand to hand until flattened into thin, wafer-like cakes, and baked over a quick fire, on a thin iron plate or a flat stone.
Unquestionably, unleavened bread, well kneaded and properly baked, is the most wholesome of all breads, but harder to masticate than that made light by fermentation, but this is an advantage; for it insures more thorough mixing with that important digestive agent, the saliva, than is usually given to more easily softened food.