A piece of woollen blanket is of great value in making bread. Wrap it around the bowl in which the dough is rising, and it will keep the temperature even. Nothing is more injurious than chilling the dough before it is risen. It does not hurt it after it is well risen.
Bread can be made with either milk or water; simply substitute milk where water is called for. The milk should first be boiled and cooled.
Hop Yeast.
Put a tablespoonful of hops in one quart of cold water and place on the fire. Now pare and grate into a tin pan three large uncooked potatoes. When the hops and water begin to boil, strain the boiling water on the grated potatoes. Place the pan with the potatoes and hop-water on the stove, and stir until the mixture boils up. Take from the fire, and add one tablespoonful of salt and two of granulated sugar. Let this mixture stand until it is blood warm; then add half a cupful of liquid yeast, or half a cake of compressed yeast dissolved in one fourth of a cupful of water. Pour the mixture into a large earthen bowl which has been thoroughly heated. Cover, and set in a warm place for six hours. In that time the yeast should be so well risen that it is foamy all through. Now pour this into a stone jar, or into two preserve jars (the jars should be not more than half full), and put in a cold place, but not where the yeast will freeze. This yeast will keep three or four weeks. Made in this way it is called liquid yeast.
Liquid, compressed, or dry yeast, if sweet and good, will all make excellent bread. In very hot countries the dry yeast is by far the best, unless one have an ice chest to keep the liquid yeast in. As the method of making bread with the dry yeast is different from that of making with liquid yeast, a separate rule may be valuable.
Bread Made with Dry Yeast.
For three Loaves.
2 quarts of flour.
1-1/4 pints (2-1/2 cupfuls) of blood-warm water.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter or lard.