Melt the lard in the warm water, add the sugar, then the flour by degrees, stirring in smoothly. A quart and a pint of flour will usually be sufficient if the quality is good. Next comes the yeast, lastly the soda. Beat up hard for several minutes, and set to rise as above.
Bread mixed with potato-sponge is more nutritious, keeps fresh longer, and is sweeter than that made with the plainer sponge, But there are certain seasons of the year when good old potatoes cannot be procured, and new ones will not do for this purpose.
The potato-sponge is safer, because surer for beginners in the important art of bread-making. After using it for fifteen years, I regard it as almost infallible—given the conditions of good flour, yeast, kneading, and baking.
Family Bread (White.) ✠
Having set your sponge over night, or, if you bake late in the afternoon, early in the morning, sift dry flour into a deep bread-tray, and strew a few spoonfuls of fine salt over it. The question of the quantity of flour is a delicate one, requiring judgment and experience. Various brands of flour are so unequal with respect to the quantity of gluten they contain, that it is impossible to give any invariable rule on this subject. It will be safe, however, to sift two quarts and a pint, if you have set the potato-sponge; two quarts for the plain. This will make two good-sized loaves. Make a hole in the middle of the heap, pour in the risen sponge (which should be very light and seamed in many places on the top), and work down the flour into it with your hands. If too soft, add more flour. If you can mould it at all, it is not too soft. If stiff, rinse out the bowl in which the sponge was set with a little lukewarm water, and work this in. When you have it in manageable shape, begin to knead. Work the mass into a ball—your hands having been well floured from the first; detach it from the tray, and lift it in your left hand, while you sprinkle flour with the right thickly over the bottom and sides of the tray. Toss back the ball into this, and knead hard—always toward the centre of the mass, which should be repeatedly turned over and around, that every portion may be manipulated. Brisk and long kneading makes the pores fine and regular. Gaping holes of diverse sizes are an unerring tell-tale of a careless cook. Spend at least twenty minutes—half an hour is better—in this kind of useful gymnastics. It is grand exercise for arms and chest. This done, work the dough into a shapely ball in the centre of the tray, sprinkle flour over the top; throw a cloth over all and leave it on the kitchen-table to rise, taking care it is not in a draught of cold air. In summer, it will rise in four or five hours—in winter, six are often necessary. It should come up steadily until it at least trebles its original bulk and the floured surface cracks all over. Knead again for ten or fifteen minutes. Then, divide it into as many parts as you wish loaves, and put these in well-greased pans for the final rising. In a large household baking, it is customary to mould the dough into oblong rolls, three or four, according to the number of loaves you desire, and to lay these close together in one large pan. The second kneading is done upon a floured board, and should be thorough as the first, the dough being continually shifted and turned. Set the pans in a warm place for an hour longer, with a cloth thrown over them to keep out the air and dust. Then bake, heeding the directions set down in the article upon bread in general. If your ovens are in good condition, one hour should bake the above quantity of bread. But here again experience must be your guide. Note carefully for yourself how long a time is required for your first successful baking, as also how much dry flour you have worked into your sponge, and let these data regulate future action. I have known a variation of two quarts in a large baking, over the usual measure of flour. I need not tell you that you had better shun a brand that requires such an excessive quantity to bring the dough to the right consistency. It is neither nutritious nor economical. When you make out the loaves, prick the top with the fork.
Do not make your first baking too large. Practice is requisite to the management of an unwieldy mass of dough. Let your trial-loaf be with say half the quantity of sponge and flour I have set down, and increase these as skill and occasion require, carefully preserving the proportions. Seven or eight quarts of flour will be needed for the semi-weekly baking of a family of moderate size.
If I have seemed needlessly minute in the directions I have laid down, it is because I wish to be a guide, not a betrayer, and because I am deeply impressed with the worth of such advice as may tend to diminish the number of those who know not for themselves the comfort and delight of eating from day to day, and year to year, good family bread.
Family Bread (Brown.) ✠
I wish it were in my power, by much and earnest speaking and writing, to induce every housekeeper to make brown bread—that is, bread made of unbolted, usually called Graham flour—a staple article of diet in her family. I only repeat the declaration of a majority of our best chemists and physicians when I say that our American fondness for fine white bread is a serious injury to our health. We bolt and rebolt our flour until we extract from it three-quarters of its nutritive qualities, leaving little strength in it except what lies in gluten or starch, and consign that which makes bone and tissue, which regulates the digestive organs, and leaves the blood pure, the brain clear, to the lower animals. Growing children especially should eat brown bread daily. It supplies the needed phosphate to the tender teeth and bones. If properly made, it soon commends itself to their taste, and white becomes insipid in comparison. Dyspeptics have long been familiar with its dietetic virtues, and, were the use of it more general, we should have fewer wretches to mourn over the destroyed coats of their stomachs. It is wholesome, sweet, honest, and should be popular.
Prepare a sponge as for white bread, using potatoes or while flour. My rule is to take out a certain quantity of the risen sponge on baking day, and set aside for brown bread. Put into a tray two parts Graham flour, one-third white, and to every quart of this allow a handful of Indian meal, with a teaspoonful of salt. Wet this up with the sponge, and when it is mixed, add, for a loaf of fair size, half a teacupful of molasses. The dough should be very soft. If there is not enough of the sponge to reduce it to the desired consistency, add a little blood-warm water. Knead it diligently and long. It will not rise so rapidly as the white flour, having more “body” to carry. Let it take its time; make into round, comfortable loaves, and set down again for the second rising, when you have again kneaded it. Bake steadily, taking care it does not burn, and do not cut while hot. The result will well repay you for your trouble. It will take a longer time to bake than white bread. Brown flour should not be sifted.