CHAPTER IV.
BREAD, MACARONI, AND RICE.
Homemade bread is healthier, satisfies hunger better, and is cheaper than bakers' bread. Make bread yourself if you possibly can. Use "middlings" if you can possibly get them; they contain the best elements of wheat. "Household Flour" has similar qualities, but is sometimes made from inferior kinds of wheat. Both are darker and cheaper than fine white flour; and bread made from them takes longer to "rise" than that made from fine flour. Bakers' bread is generally made from poor flour mixed with a little of the better sort; or with a little alum, which added to the wheat grown in wet seasons, keeps the bread from being pasty and poor in taste.
The prices of bakers' bread upon the streets in the eastern and western parts of the city are as follows: ordinary white bread, five cent loaf weighs three quarters of a pound: six cent loaf weighs fourteen ounces: eight cent loaf weighs one pound and ten ounces; black bread, two eight cent loaves weigh, respectively, one pound eight, and one pound ten ounces; fine French bread, eight cent loaf weighs three quarters of a pound; in the French quarter a six cent loaf weighs one pound. We advise the purchase of new flour in preference to old, because, unless flour is cooled and dried before it is packed, the combined action of heat and dampness destroys its gluten, and turns it sour; gluten is the nutritive part of the flour, that which makes it absorb water, and yield more bread. If you do not have a good oven, your bread can be baked at the baker's for about a cent a loaf. When bread is made too light it is tasteless, and lacks nourishment, because the decay caused in the elements of the flour used to make it by the great quantity of yeast employed, destroys the most nutritious parts of it. A pint of milk in a batch of four loaves of bread gives you a pound more bread of better quality, and helps to make it moist. Scalded skim milk will go as far as fresh whole milk, and you can use the cream for some other dish. One pound of pea-meal, or ground split-peas, added to every fourteen pounds of flour used for bread increases its nourishment, and helps to satisfy hunger.
Keep your bread in a covered earthen jar; when it is too stale to eat, or make into bread broth, dry it in a cool oven, or over the top of the fire, roll it with a rolling-pin, sift it through a sieve, and save the finest crumbs to roll fish or chops in for frying, and the largest for puddings. If a whole loaf is stale put it into a tight tin can, and either steam it, or put it into a moderately warm oven for half an hour; it will then be as good as fresh bread to the taste, and a great deal more healthy.
A good allowance of bread each day is as follows: for a man two pounds, costing six cents; for boys and women one pound and a half, costing five cents; for children a pound each, costing three cents.
Homemade Bread.—Put seven pounds of flour into a deep pan, and make a hollow in the centre; into this put one quart of lukewarm water, one tablespoonful of salt, one teaspoonful of sugar, and half a gill of yeast; have ready three pints more of warm water, and use as much of it as is necessary to make a rather soft dough, mixing and kneading it well with both hands. When it is smooth and shining strew a little flour upon it, lay a large towel over it folded, and set it in a warm place by the fire for four or five hours to rise; then knead it again for fifteen minutes, cover it with the towel, and set it to rise once more; then divide it into two or four loaves, and bake it in a quick oven. This quantity of flour will make eight pounds of bread, and will require one hour's baking to two pounds of dough. It will cost about thirty cents, and will last about two days and a half for a family of six. In cold weather, the dough should be mixed in a warm room, and not allowed to cool while rising; if it does not rise well, set the pan containing it over a large vessel of boiling water; it is best to mix the bread at night, and let it rise till morning, in a warm and even temperature.
Rice Bread.—Simmer one pound of rice in three quarts of water until the rice is soft, and the water evaporated or absorbed; let it cool until it is only luke-warm; mix into it nearly four pounds of flour, two teaspoonfuls of salt, and four tablespoonfuls of yeast; knead it until it is smooth and shining, let it rise before the fire, make it up into loaves with the little flour reserved from the four pounds, and bake it thoroughly. It will cost about twenty-five cents, and make more than eight pounds of excellent bread.
Potato Bread.—Take good, mealy boiled potatoes, in the proportion of one-third of the quantity of flour you propose to use, pass them through a coarse sieve into the flour, using a wooden spoon and adding enough cold water to enable you to pass them through readily; use the proper quantity of yeast, salt, and water, and make up the bread in the usual way. It will cost about twenty-four cents if you use the above quantities, and give you eight pounds or more of good bread.
Pulled Bread.—Take from the oven an ordinary loaf of bread when it is about half baked, and with the fingers, while it is yet hot, pull it apart in egg-sized pieces of irregular shape; throw them upon tins, and bake them in a slow oven to a rich brown color. This bread is excellent to eat with cheese or wine. An ordinary sized loaf, costing about three cents makes a large panful.