Baking. When dough is made at the first mixing, return it to the pan after it is kneaded and let it rise to double its size (not more), and then work it down, mold it into loaves, and let it rise a second time in the baking-pans. When a sponge is made, knead the dough when the flour is added to the sponge, and put it at once into the baking-pans.
Divide the dough evenly and shape it to the pans as well as possible, filling the pans only half full. Cover and set them in a warm place free from draughts. When they have doubled (not more) in size, put them in the oven. The loaf rises a little more in the oven. If it is too light, it is likely to fall, which means it has soured, and for this there is no remedy. The loaf in the pan should rise in one hour.
Care in baking is even more essential than care in mixing and raising the bread. Test the oven by putting in a teaspoonful of flour. If it browns the flour in five minutes the heat is right. The fire. Have the fire prepared so it will not need replenishing during the hour required for the baking. The bread rises after it goes in the oven, and is likely to rise unevenly if the oven is hotter on one side than the other; therefore it should be watched and turned carefully if necessary. At the end of ten to fifteen minutes the top should be browned, and this will arrest the rising. If the oven is too cool, the bread is likely to rise so much as to run over the pan, or to have a hole in the center. If the oven is too hot it will make a crust too soon, the centre be underdone, and the crust be too thick. Time. One hour is the time required for baking the ordinary sized loaf.
When the bread is taken from the oven turn it out of the pans and support the loaves in such a way that the air will reach all sides. Care of bread after it is baked. If the loaves stand flat the bottom crust will become moist. If wrapped in cloth it will do the same and give a soft crust, which, however, some prefer to have. It should not be put in the bread-box until entirely cold.
Baking bread rolls. For baking rolls the rule is different from that for bread. Rolls should rise, to be very light, more than double their original size, and the oven be hot enough to form a crust at once. It should brown flour in one minute and bake the rolls in fifteen to twenty minutes.
Flour. The ordinary white flour of best quality is nearly all starch, the nourishing parts of the wheat having been mostly all removed by the bolting to make it white. The whole wheat flour makes a much more nourishing and health-giving bread, and when the habit of eating it is once formed, bread made of the white flour is no longer liked.
Pans. There is a variety of bread-pans giving loaves of different shapes to be used for different purposes. Besides the square tin which gives the ordinary square loaf, there is a sheet iron rounded pan open at the ends. The dough for this pan is made into a long roll a little thicker in the middle than at the ends. It gives the shape of the Vienna loaf. After the bread has risen cut it across the top in three diagonal slashes with a sharp knife; when it is nearly baked brush over the top with a thin boiled cornstarch, and it will further resemble the Vienna loaf. For dinner bread, there is a pan a foot long of two flutes, about two inches each across and open at the ends; for this roll the dough long and round, or make two smaller rolls and twist them together; bake in a hot oven like biscuits. This gives a long, round crusty loaf like the French bread. A pan of small flutes is used for dinner sticks or finger rolls, giving a pencil of bread three quarters of an inch thick and five inches long. Different shapes for variety. Bread made in different shapes gives a pleasant variety and often seems like a different article when baked so as to give more or less crust.
