The oven should not be too hot. If you cannot hold your bare arm within it while you count thirty, it is too quick. Keep the heat steady after the bread goes in. Too much fire at first, and rapidly cooling, produce the effect upon the bread which is technically called “slack-baked,” i. e., the inside of the loaf is never properly done. Practice and intelligent observation will, in time, make you an adept in the management of your ovens. If the bread rises rapidly while baking, and the crust begins to form before the lower part of the loaf is baked, cover the top with clean paper until you are ready to brown it.
Grate away the burned portions of the crust, should there be such. This is better than chipping with a knife. One of the best bread-makers I know bakes in round pans, each loaf by itself, and grates the whole outer surface, top, bottom, and sides, quickly and lightly, toning down the brown to a uniform and pleasing tint. Tilt your loaves upon the edge, the lower part resting upon the table, the upper supported by the wall or other upright object, and throw a coarse dry cloth over them until they cool. This position allows the air to get at all sides, and prevents “sweating.” A tin bread-box is best, with a cloth at bottom and enwrapping the loaves.
Yeast (Hop.) ✠
- 4 large potatoes, or six small.
- 2 quarts cold water.
- Double handful hops, tied in a coarse muslin bag.
- 4 tablespoonfuls flour.
- 2 tablespoonfuls white sugar.
Peel the potatoes, and put them with the hop-bag into a saucepan containing two quarts cold water. Cover and boil until the potatoes break and fall apart. Take these out with a perforated skimmer, leaving the water still boiling, mash them fine with a potato-beetle, and work in the flour and sugar. Moisten this gradually with the boiling hop tea, stirring it to a smooth paste. When all the tea has been mixed in, set it aside to cool. While still slightly warm, add four tablespoonfuls of lively yeast, and turn all into a large open vessel to “work.” Keep this in a warm place until it ceases to bubble up, or until next day. In summer it will work well in a few hours. When quite light, put in earthen jars with small mouths, in which fit corks, or bottle it, and remove to ice-house or cellar. It will keep good for a fortnight—longer in winter.
When you wish to use it for baking, send a small vessel to the cellar for the desired quantity, and re-cork at once. A half-hour in a hot kitchen may spoil it.
Yeast (Self-working).
Tie the hops in a coarse muslin bag, and boil one hour in four quarts of water. Let it cool to lukewarmness before removing the bag. Wet with the tepid liquor—a little at a time—the flour, making to a smooth paste. Put in the sugar and salt, beat up the batter three minutes before adding the rest of the tea. Set it away for two days in an open bowl covered with a thin cloth, in a closet which is moderately and evenly warm.
On the third day peel, boil, and mash the potatoes, and when entirely free from lumps and specks, stir in gradually the thickened hop-liquor. Let it stand twelve hours longer in the bowl, stirring often, and keeping it in the warm kitchen. Then bottle or put away in corked jars, which must be perfectly sweet and freshly scalded. This will keep a month in a cool cellar. It is more troublesome to make it than other kinds of yeast, but it needs no other “rising” to excite fermentation, and remains good longer than that made in the usual way.