Good bread may be made either by the old-fashioned "sponge" method or "straight." Sponge method consists of a batter mixed from liquid yeast (usually home-made potato yeast is used) and a small part of the flour required for making the bread. This batter was usually set to rise at night and mixed up in the centre of a quantity of flour, in an old-fashioned wooden dough tray. The following morning enough flour was kneaded in to form a dough, and when well-raised and light, this dough was formed into loaves and placed in pans for the final rising. The more easily and more quickly made "straight" dough, when using Fleischman's compressed yeast, is mixed in the morning and all the ingredients necessary are added at one time. It is then set to rise and, when the dough has doubled in bulk, it is kneaded down and when risen to once and half its size, shaped into loaves, placed in pans to rise and, when risen to top of pans, bake.
Better bread may be made from flour not freshly milled. Flour should be kept in a dry place; it improves with moderate age. Stand flour in a warm place to dry out several hours before using if you would have good bread.
When baking bread the heat of the oven should not be too great at first, or the outside of the bread will harden too quickly and inside the loaves will not be thoroughly baked before the crust is thick and dark. The temperature of the oven and time required for baking depend upon the size of the loaves, yet the bread should be placed in rather a quick oven, one in which the loaves should brown in about fifteen minutes, when the heat may be reduced, finishing the baking more slowly.
Small biscuits and rolls can stand a much hotter oven and quicker baking than large loaves, which must be heated slowly, and baked a longer time. A one-pound loaf should bake about one hour. On being taken from the oven, bread should be placed on a sieve, so that the air can circulate about it until it is thoroughly cooled. In the Farmers' Bulletin, we read: "The lightness and sweetness depend as much on the way bread is made as on the materials used." The greatest care should be used in preparing and baking the dough and in cooking and keeping the finished bread. Though good housekeepers agree that light, well-raised bread can readily be made, with reasonable care and attention, heavy, badly-raised bread is unfortunately very common. Such bread is not palatable and is generally considered to be unwholesome, and probably more indigestion has been caused by it than by any other badly-cooked food. As compared with most meats and vegetables, bread has practically no waste and is very completely digested, but it is usually too poor in proteins to be fittingly used as the sole article of diet, but when eaten with due quantities of other food, it is invaluable and well deserves its title of "Staff of Life."
When the housewife "sets" bread sponge to rise over night, she should mix the sponge or dough quite late, and early in the morning mold it at once into shapely-looking loaves (should the sponge have had the necessary amount of flour added the night before for making a stiff dough).
Being aware of the great nutritive value of raisins and dried currants, Aunt Sarah frequently added a cup of either one or the other, well-floured, to the dough when shaping into loaves for the final rising.
Aunt Sarah frequently used a mixture of butter and lard when baking on account of its being more economical, and for the reason that a lesser quantity of lard may be used; the shortening qualities being greater than that of butter. The taste of lard was never detected in her bread or cakes, they being noted for their excellence, as the lard she used was home-rendered, almost as sweet as dairy butter, free from taste or odor of pork. She always beat lard to a cream when using it for baking cakes, and salted it well before using, and I do not think the small quantity used could be objected to on hygienic principles.
I have read "bread baking" is done once every three or four weeks, no oftener, in some of the farm houses of Central Europe, and yet stale bread is there unknown. Their method of keeping bread fresh is to sprinkle flour into a large sack and into this pack the loaves, taking care to have the top crusts of bread touch each other. If they have to lie bottom to bottom, sprinkle flour between them. Swing the sack in a dry place. It must swing and there must be plenty of flour between the loaves. It sounds more odd than reasonable, I confess.
