Leavened Rye Bread.
Take a piece of dough, of about a pound weight, and keep it for use—it will keep several days very well. Mix this dough with some warm water, and knead it up with a portion of flour to ferment; then take half a bushel of flour, and divide it into four parts; mix a quarter of the flour with the leaven, and a sufficient quantity of water to make it into dough, and knead it well. Let this remain in a corner of your trough, covered with flannel, until it ferments and rises properly; then dilute it with more water, and add another quarter of the flour, and let it remain and rise. Do the same with the other two quarters of the flour, one quarter after another, taking particular care never to mix more flour till the last has risen properly. When finished, add six ounces of salt; then knead it again, and divide it into eight loaves, making them broad, and not so thick and high as is usually done, by which means they will be better baked. Let them remain to rise, in order to overcome the pressure of the hand in forming them; then put them in the oven, and reserve a piece of dough for the next baking. The dough thus kept, may with proper care, be prevented from spoiling, by mixing from time to time small quantities of fresh flour with it.
It requires some attention to be able to determine the exact quantity of leaven necessary for the proper fermentation of the dough. When it is deficient in quantity, the process of fermentation is interrupted, and the bread thus prepared is solid and heavy, and if too much leaven be used, it communicates to the bread a disagreeable sour taste.
Hungarian Rye Bread.
Two large handfuls of hops are boiled in four quarts of water: this is poured upon as much wheaten bread as it will moisten, and to this are added four or five pounds of leaven. When the mass is warm, the several ingredients are worked together till well mixed. It is then deposited in a warm place for twenty-four hours, and afterwards divided into small pieces, about the size of a hen’s egg, which are dried by being placed on a board, and exposed to a dry air, but not to the sun; when dry, they are laid up for use, and may be kept half a year. The ferment, thus prepared, is applied in the following manner: for baking six large loaves, six good handfuls of these balls are dissolved in seven or eight quarts of warm water; this water is poured through a sieve into one end of the bread trough, and after it three quarts of warm water; the remaining mass being well pressed out. The liquor is mixed up with flour, sufficient to form a mass of the size of a large loaf; this is strewed over with flour: the sieve, with its contents, is put upon it, and the whole is covered up warm, and left till it has risen enough, and its surface has begun to crack; this forms the leaven. Fifteen quarts of warm water, in which six handfuls of salt has been dissolved, are then poured upon it through the sieve; the necessary quantity of flour is added, and mixed and kneaded with the leaven: this is covered up warm, and left for about half an hour. It is then formed into loaves, which are kept for another half-hour in a warm room; and after that they are put into the oven, where they remain two or three hours, according to their size.
Bread made with Yeast.
The principal improvement that has been made in the art of fabricating bread, consists in the substitution of yeast, (or the froth that rises to the surface during the fermentation of malt liquors,) instead of common flour dough, in a state of acescency, called leaven, to rise the bread dough, made of flour and water, before it is baked. This substance very materially improves the bread. Yeast makes the dough rise more effectually than ordinary leaven, and the bread thus produced is much lighter, and free from that sour taste which may often be perceived in bread raised with leaven; because too much has been added to the paste, or because the dough has been allowed to advance too far in the process of fermentation before it was baked.
The discovery of the application of yeast, to improve the panification of bread flour, was made and first secretly adopted by the bakers of Paris; but when the practice was discovered, the College of Physicians there, in 1688, declared it prejudicial to health, and it was not till after a long time that the bakers succeeded in convincing the people, that bread made with yeast was superior to bread made with sour dough or leaven.
The bread used in this metropolis and in most other large towns in England, is made of wheaten flour, water, yeast, and salt. The average proportion are two pints by weight, of water, to three of flour, but the proportions vary considerably with the diversity of climate, years, season, age, and grinding of the wheat. There are some kinds of wheat flour that require precisely three-fourths of their weight of water. That flour is always the best which combines with the greatest possible quantity of water. Bakers and pastry-cooks judge of the quality of flour from the characters of the dough. The best flour forms instantly by the addition of water a very gluey elastic paste, whereas bad flour produces a dough that cannot be elongated without breaking.