GRAHAM BREAD (AN OLD RECIPE)
- 2 cups sour milk
- 2 cups sweet milk or water.
- 1 teaspoon soda (Salaratus)
- Graham flour.
- ½ cup molasses.
- 1 tablespoonful melted butter.
- Pinch of salt.
Stiffen about as thick as ordinary molasses cake. Bake at once.
"MARY'S" RECIPE FOR WHEAT BREAD
- 1 cup sweet milk (scalded).
- 1 cup cold water.
- 1 cake Fleischman's yeast (dissolved in a small quantity of luke-warm water).
- 1½ teaspoonfuls sugar.
- 1 rounded teaspoonful salt.
- 1 tablespoonful butter.
- Flour, about 1½ quarts.
This makes good bread and, as bread is apt to chill if set over night in a cold kitchen, or sour if allowed to stand over night in summer, set this sponge early in the morning. Stiffen with flour and knead about 25 minutes; place the dough in a covered bowl in a warm place to rise about two hours and when well-risen and light, knead and stand one hour. Then mold into shapely loaves, place in pans, brush tops of loaves with melted butter, and when doubled in bulk, in about 45 minutes put in an oven which is so hot you can hold your hand in only while you count thirty, or if a little flour browns in the oven in about six minutes, it is hot enough for bread. The oven should be hot enough to brown the bread slightly five minutes after being put in. Medium-sized loaves of bread require from ¾ of an hour to one hour to bake. When bread is sufficiently baked it can be told by turning the loaf over and rapping with the knuckles on the bottom of the loaf. If it sounds hollow, it is thoroughly baked, and should be taken from the oven. Stand loaves up on end against some object, where the air can circulate around them, and brush a little butter over the top to soften the crust. An authority on the chemistry of foods cautious housewives against cooling loaves of bread too rapidly after taking from the oven, and I should like to add a word of caution against eating fresh breads of any kind. Bread should be baked at least twelve hours before being eaten. The sponge for this bread was set at 6 o'clock in the morning; bread was baked at 10.30.
From 1 pint of liquid, 1 cake of yeast and about 1½ quarts of flour were made two loaves of bread. More yeast is required to raise a sponge containing sugar, eggs and shortening than is required to raise bread sponge containing only liquid, flour and yeast.