Recently a number of millers have modified the new process by using the rollers for cleansing, separating, and grinding until the last stages of the work, when the flour is put between stones and ground smooth and fine. When this is done the distinguishing features between the old and new processes are lost. This flour is smooth to the touch, will keep its shape if pressed in the hand, and will not absorb as much moisture as the more granular kind. It can be used equally well for bread, cake, and pastry. Some of the mills in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan make this flour in perfection.
Flour that is made of new spring wheat will not give so good bread when first made as it will after it has been kept for a month or more. A great deal of the trouble with bread comes from this condition of the flour. A barrel of flour that will not make good bread to-day, simply because the wheat was too new when ground, will, if kept for two months, make perfect bread, if the yeast be good; for, after all, the yeast is more frequently than the flour the cause of failure to make satisfactory bread.
When one buys flour in small quantities there will always be an uncertainty as to how it will work until after the first time it is used. Even in small families it is better to get flour by the barrel, as it improves with age. Another thing for the housekeeper to remember is that the whitest flour is not the most nutritious. What is called first-quality flour does not contain nearly so large a quantity of the best elements of the wheat as the second quality, which is much darker, but gives a sweeter and more nutritious loaf.
It is wonderful to see the various processes through which the wheat goes before it comes out of the mill. There is no question that flour which is made by the roller process in the first stages and finally ground between the stones will give the most satisfaction. The wheat is more thoroughly cleaned than when the flour is made wholly by the old process, and the separation of the hard substance and the dust from the wheat is more thorough than by the old mode, and therefore when the flour comes from the millstones it is free from undesirable substances.
When and Why Soda, Cream of Tartar, and Baking
Powders are Used.
Soda may be used in all kinds of bread, cake, pudding, and griddle cakes where an acid also is used. The acid may be cream of tartar, vinegar, lemon juice, sour milk or cream, molasses, or something else. If two teaspoonfuls of cream of tartar be used, there must be one teaspoonful of soda, save in cases where the cream of tartar is used only to give tone and firmness of texture to a pudding or cake in which only the whites of the eggs are employed,—such as many of the meringue puddings, and angel cake.
In puddings and cakes where molasses, lemon juice, or vinegar is used, soda should be used instead of baking powder, because the baking powder is a combination of an acid and alkali, and the proportions are so carefully adjusted that the two ingredients neutralize each other.
Sometimes a rule for cake or gingerbread calls for one teaspoonful of soda and one of cream of tartar. In such cases allowance is made for the acid in the molasses, or in the sour milk or cream that is used. Again, in making cake in which a good many eggs and wine or brandy are used, a small quantity of soda, but no cream of tartar, is called for. This is because there is enough acid in the wine and butter to neutralize the small quantity of soda and produce the required amount of carbonic acid gas.
It will be seen, by these statements, that the housekeeper who uses baking powder can do without cream of tartar, but she must be provided with soda when using molasses and sour milk and cream.