“I do. I have used no other for many years.”
“And the bread I ate upon your table, the other night, was made according to this?”
Again an affirmative answer.
“I guess your cook could tell another story,” rejoined the skeptic. “You can’t make me believe that bread is made by rule. I put my materials together anyhow, and I have as good luck as most of my neighbors.”
I regarded my visitor as an impertinent simpleton; but I have been amazed, in subsequent years, at finding that her creed is that of hundreds of housewives more or less sensible. “Luck” rules the baking, and upon the shoulders of this Invisible are laid the deficiencies of the complacent cook. Cheap flour and laziness are at the bottom of more mishaps in the bread line than any other combination of circumstances. From the inferior grades of flour, it is possible to make tolerable biscuit, crumpets, and muffins, plain pastry, and very good griddle-cakes. You cannot, by any stretch of art, produce excellent bread from poor flour. It is no economy to purchase it for this purpose. It is judicious to lay in two barrels at a time, and to use the best only for the semi- or tri-weekly baking.
Chiefest then among the conditions to good bread, I place good “family” flour—dry, elastic, and odorless. Whiteness is a secondary consideration, although, to American eyes, this is a recommendation. A little experience will teach you to detect the signs that foretell satisfactory baking-days, and vice versâ. If in handling the flour you discern a heaviness like that of ground plaster; if in squeezing a handful tightly you discover that it retains the imprint of palm and fingers, and rolls back into the tray a compact ball or roll; if it is in the least musty, or sour, use it very sparingly in your trial-baking, for the chances are as ten to one that you will head the barrel up again and return it to your grocer.
Sometimes new flour can be ripened for use by sifting enough for each baking into a large tray, and exposing it to the hot sun for some hours, or by setting it upon the kitchen hearth for the same time. And it not unfrequently happens that flour improves greatly after the barrel has been open for several days or weeks. It dries out and becomes lighter, more elastic. Next in importance to the quality of the flour is that of the yeast. This should be light in color and lively, effervescing easily when shaken, and emitting an odor like weak ammonia. If dull or sour, it is bad. In cities it is easiest, perhaps cheapest, to buy yeast from a brewery or bakery, exercising your discrimination as to quality. Unless you can satisfy yourself in this regard, you had better make your own. I can confidently recommend the receipts given in this work as easy and safe, having tried them in my own family.
Novices in bread-making, and many who should have learned better by long experience, fall into a sad mistake in the consistency of the dough. It should be mixed as soft as it can be handled. Bread will rise sooner and higher, be lighter and more digestible, and keep fresh much longer, if this rule be followed. Stiff bread is close in texture, often waxy to the teeth, and after a day or so becomes very hard.
Set the dough to rise in a moderately warm place, and keep it in an even temperature. There is force in the old lament—“My bread took cold, last night.” Cold arrests the process of fermentation. There is a chance, should this occur, that a removal to a more genial atmosphere and careful nursing may cure the congestion, should it be only partial. Too much heat carries forward the work too rapidly. In this case, you will find your dough puffy and sour. Correct the latter evil by dissolving a little soda or saleratus in hot water, and working it well in.
Knead your bread faithfully and from all sides, until it rebounds like india-rubber after a smart blow of the fist upon the centre of the mass.