The dough should be just stiff enough to handle. When you can lift it to the kneading-board without spilling, it is ready. Rinse the bowl out with a little warm water and work into the dough in order to get all the sponge. Flour the board and knead the ball of dough, always working from the outside of the ball toward the middle. After ten minutes’ hard work, turning the dough over and over and around and around, the dough should be so elastic that if you deal it a smart blow with your fist the indentation will fill up again instantly.
Return to the mixing bowl, cover and leave as before, out of drafts in a steady temperature. When it has risen to double the original bulk—in four or six hours—return to the board and knead again, quickly and vigorously, for eight or ten minutes. Make into loaves and set to rise in pans, filling each half-full. Cover with a cloth, let all rise for an hour, or until the pans are two-thirds full, and bake.
Have a steady fire, with coal enough to last until the baking is over. See that the ovens are “just right” by holding your naked arm in one. If you can hold it there comfortably for one whole minute and not more, you may put in the bread. Or try the oven with a little flour put upon a tin plate and set well back in the closed oven. It should be delicately touched with brown in five minutes if the oven be right.
In ten minutes open the oven door very cautiously, and if you see the pans filled to the top, cover with light-brown “grocer’s paper” to prevent the crust from hardening before the heart of the loaf is done. Ten minutes before the hour for baking is up remove the papers and let the top crust brown.
Turn out the loaves carefully upon a cloth, propping them against a pan or other clean object, that they may not get sodden in cooling. Do not put into the bread-box until they are entirely cold. The box should have a cloth in the bottom, and another thrown over the bread before the box is closed.
Bread with plain sponge (No. 2)
Chop a tablespoonful of cottolene or other fat, or butter, into a quart of flour; wet with a quart of warm water; add a tablespoonful of sugar, and half a yeast-cake dissolved in warm water. Beat all together hard for ten minutes, as you would cake batter. Cover, and set aside to rise as with potato sponge. In the morning work into two quarts of salted flour and proceed as directed in last recipe.
Milk bread (No. 1)
Sift two quarts of flour with a tablespoonful of sugar and an even teaspoonful of salt. Have ready a pint of boiling water into which you have stirred an even tablespoonful of butter. Add, while the water is boiling, two cups of milk, and take from the fire at once. When a little more than blood-warm, stir into the milk-and-water half a cake of compressed yeast, dissolved in half a cupful of warm water. Make a hole in the sifted flour, pour in the mixture and work quickly with a wooden spoon to a soft dough. Flour your hands, make the dough into a manageable ball and knead hard and steadily for ten minutes. Let the dough rise to double the original bulk in your covered bread-bowl, make into loaves when you have kneaded it for five minutes, and proceed as already directed.