For a very small family, take half a pint of rye meal, not sifted, and a pint of sifted Indian meal, a pint of sour milk, a half a gill of molasses, a teaspoonful of salt, and a large teaspoonful of saleratus. Mix all the ingredients except the saleratus, dissolve that (as it should always be) in a little boiling water, and add it, stirring the mixture well. Grease a tin pudding pan, or a pail having a close lid, and having put the bread in it, set it into a kettle of boiling water. The bread should not quite fill the pail, as it must have room to swell. See that the water does not boil up to the top of the pail, and also take care it does not boil entirely away. The bread should be cooked at least four hours. To serve it, remove the lid, and set it a few minutes into the stove oven, without the lid, to dry the top; then it will turn out in perfect shape.
If used as a pudding, those who have cream, can make an excellent sauce for it of thick sour cream, by stirring into it plenty of sugar, and adding nutmeg. This bread is improved by being made, and put into the pan or pail in which it is to be boiled, two or three hours before it is set into the kettle. It is good toasted the next day.
Indian Loaf.
To one quart of sweet milk, put a gill of molasses, a teaspoonful of saleratus, a heaping pint of Indian meal, a gill of flour, and a teaspoonful of salt. Stir it well together, put it into a deep brown pan, and bake in a brick oven. It should be stirred the last thing before being set into the oven. It must be in the oven many hours, at least eight or nine, if it is a brick oven, and if set in towards night should stand till morning. If it is baked in a range, it will require five or six hours of moderate heat.
Rye Bread.
Take a pint of water, and a large spoonful of fine Indian meal, and make it into gruel. Add a pint of milk, and when cool enough, a small gill of yeast, and then the flour. Fine, bolted rye flour is necessary to make this bread good. Knead it about as stiff as white bread. Let it rise over night, and then mould and put into three pans to rise again. When light, bake it about an hour. Rye is very adhesive, and a young cook will be troubled with its sticking to her fingers, but practice will make it easy to manage it.
To make Stale Bread, or Cake, Fresh.
Plunge the loaf one instant in cold water, and lay it upon a tin in the stove ten or fifteen minutes. It will be like new bread without its deleterious qualities. Stale cake is thus made nice as new cake. But bread or cake heated over thus, should be used immediately.
Various convenient Uses of Bread Dough.
In the winter, dough may be kept sweet many days in a place where it will be cold, without freezing, and it will grow better till the last. It should be raised light, then kneaded a little, and then covered with a damp cloth, so that a dry crust will not form on the top. Fresh bread can thus be furnished for the table every day, without extra work. [Doughnuts], [bread], [cake], or [rusks] can be made of it by adding butter, sugar, and spice; tea biscuit also, [fried biscuit], crust for [apple dumpling], and for [pan pie]. See the receipts for these articles.