A Course of Lectures on the Principles of Domestic Economy and Cookery

by Juliet Corson

I might, while I am making our pie, say a little about flour in general use in the family. As a rule I use what is called pastry flour, best for pie crusts. Pastry flour has more starch in it than ordinary family flour, or bread flour. The starch is the interior of the grain. The family flour is the grain ground entire, only the husk being removed. From grain ground in that way none of the nutritious elements are removed. You get a greater proportion of gluten, and some of the mineral elements of the grain that lie close to the husk; the flour that has an excess of gluten in it will absorb more water than pastry flour, or flour composed chiefly of starch, and it will make a tougher dough, either in the form of pie crust or bread than a flour which has the most starch in it. It is more nutritious than starchy flour, so that if you want tender, rather white pastry and bread, you must make up your minds to sacrifice some of the nutritious elements of the flour. All through the West the flour which is marketed is made, I think, from the entire wheat, and that is more thoroughly good, and more nutritious, than the so-called choice pastry flour. In the West you have a better flour than we at the East do, if we depend upon the Eastern mills. There are some very good brands of flour made in New York State, but as a rule they are not so full of gluten and not so nutritious as the Western flours. Where flour is made from winter wheat, which lies in the ground all winter long and gathers more of the mineral elements of the soil than spring wheat does, the flour is superior.

The pie is now heaped full of sliced apples by using about half a dozen rather small apples. I suppose you think this is a rather extravagant way to make a pie, but you do not need to put so many apples in unless you want to; we want a nice thick pie. This is cinnamon that I am using for flavoring. Put two heaping tablespoonfuls of sugar on top of the apples in the pie. Finally brush the top of the pie, either with beaten egg or with a little sugar and water dissolved, and put it into the oven to bake.

BREAD MAKING.

Now take your recipe for bread making. Use the compressed yeast which you buy at the grocery store. For two small loaves of bread or a large pan of biscuit use a whole cake of yeast. Dissolve the yeast in lukewarm water, a cupful of lukewarm water. Then add enough flour to form a thick batter; that will be about a cupful of flour; a thick batter which will cling to the mixing spoon when you lift the spoon and let a drop fall on the surface. Cover the bowl with a towel folded several times, or a thick cloth, so that all the heat can be retained. Then set the bowl somewhere near the fire, in a place not too hot to bear your hand, and let it stand for about half an hour, or until the batter is light and foamy. Keep the bowl covered all the time, and take care that you do not have it in too hot a place. Don’t have it in a place where you can not bear your hand. After the sponge—as the batter is called—is light and foaming, mix in another cupful of lukewarm water in which a teaspoonful of salt is dissolved. After the second cupful of lukewarm water with the teaspoonful of salt dissolved in it, add enough flour to form a dough stiff enough to knead with the hands. Knead the dough on the board for just five minutes. Some good housekeepers would declare that just five minutes’ kneading is flying in the face of Providence in the way of bread making, but I assure you it is enough. That is, it is enough to give you bread of a firm, fine grain, perfectly even in its consistency. It won’t be full of large, uneven holes; it will be firm, fine bread. After you have kneaded the bread five minutes make it up in a little loaf, or two loaves, as you like; put them in small iron pans, buttered—black iron bread pans—and set them again by the fire, where you can bear your hand, and let the little loaves of dough rise until they are just twice as large as when you put them down. That generally will take about half an hour if the yeast is good. Brush the loaves over the top with a little melted butter, or with a teaspoonful of sugar dissolved in water. Put them in the oven and bake them. The bread is to be baked until you can run a sharp knife or trussing needle in through the thickest part of the loaf without the bread sticking in any way. If the needle or knife comes out clean and bright the bread is done. It may take from half an hour to an hour to bake the bread. In the stove that I used the first morning over in the other building I have baked a loaf of bread, the size of those I am going to show you, in eleven minutes. I had not realized that bread could be baked thoroughly in so short a time, but one day in Northampton, Mass., one of my class timed the baking of the bread. A loaf of bread of that size was baked in eleven minutes. This same bread dough you can make up in the form of little rolls. I will make part of it up in rolls. Of course you will understand that the smaller the piece of dough the more rapidly it will rise the second time, and the quicker you will be enabled to bake it. So if you are in a hurry, and want bread baked quickly, you will make it in the form of little rolls; when I make the rolls I will describe the process.

Question. Should bread be baked a long or a short time?

Miss Corson. The sooner it can be baked the better. There is no special object to be gained in the baking of bread except to thoroughly cook the dough. It can not affect the nutriment of the flour very much whether it takes a longer or a shorter time. The nutriment of the flour might be slightly wasted if it took a very long time. There is no objection to baking bread as quickly as it can be done.

Now before I begin to make the pudding I will answer a question that has been asked about the best yeast and the quick rising of bread. The object of raising bread is simply to make it digestible by separating the mass of the dough. If it is firm and solid, that is, if the bread is heavy, it can not be easily penetrated by the gastric juice, and consequently is indigestible. So that the most healthy bread is that which is sufficiently light and porous to allow the gastric juice to penetrate it easily. Only a mechanical operation is required to make the bread light. Now that process which will most quickly make the bread dough light is the most desirable. The longer you take to raise bread, the more slowly you raise, the more of the nutriment of the flour you destroy by the process of fermentation that lightens the bread. The yeast combining with water at a certain temperature causes fermentation, and from that fermentation carbolic acid gas is evolved, which forces its way up through the dough and fills it with little bubbles,—in other words, makes it light. Now the more quickly you can accomplish that fermentation, or rather lightening of the dough by the formation of little air cells, the more you will preserve the nutriment of the flour.

The idea prevails to some extent that if ladies use as much yeast as I have to-day the bread will taste of the yeast. It will not if the yeast is fresh. If the yeast is old or sour it will taste. But you can use as much as I have shown you and not have the bread taste after it is done. You see my object in using a great deal of yeast, proportionately, is to accomplish the lightening of the dough in a very short time. The best bread that ever was made or that ever was put on the market was raised mechanically, without the action of yeast; it was called aerated bread. It was bread dough lightened by a mechanical process. Carbonic acid gas was driven into the dough by machinery after the flour was mixed with salt water; and the bread made was very light and every particle of the nourishment preserved in that way.

Question. Do you ever put sugar in bread?