A Treatise on Bread, and Bread-making

by Sylvester Graham

With your meal, and yeast, and water or milk brought together before you, then, proceed in the light of the instruction you have now received, to mix your dough; and remember that the more thoroughly you knead it, the more equally you diffuse the yeast throughout the whole mass, and bring it to act on every particle of the saccharine matter at the same time, and the whiter, lighter, and more delicious you make your bread.

Who that can look back thirty or forty years to those blessed days of New England’s prosperity and happiness, when our good mothers used to make the family bread, but can well remember how long and how patiently those excellent matrons stood over their bread troughs, kneading and moulding their dough? and who with such recollections cannot also well remember the delicious bread that these mothers used invariably to set before them? There was a natural sweetness and richness in it which made it always desirable; and which we cannot now vividly recollect, without feeling a strong desire to partake again of such bread as our mothers made for us in the days of our childhood.

Let it be borne in mind, then, that without a very thorough kneading of the dough, there can be no just ground of confidence that the bread will be good. “It should be kneaded,” says one of much experience in this matter, “till it becomes flaky.” Indeed I am confident that our loaf bread would be greatly improved in all its qualities, if the dough were for a considerable time subjected to the operations of the machine which the bakers call the break, used in making crackers and sea-bread.

The wheat meal, and especially if it is ground coarsely, swells considerably in the dough, and therefore the dough should not, at first, be made quite so stiff, as that made of superfine flour; and when it is raised, if it is found too soft to mould well, let a little more meal be added.

When the dough has been properly mixed and thoroughly kneaded, cover it over with a clean napkin or towel, and a light woollen blanket kept for the purpose, and place the bread trough where the temperature will be kept at about 60° F., or about summer heat, and there let it remain till the dough becomes light. But as it is impossible to regulate the quantity and quality of your yeast, the moisture and temperature of your dough, and several other conditions and circumstances, so as to secure at all times precisely the same results in the same time, it is therefore necessary that careful attention should be given that the proper moment should be seized to work over and mould the dough into the loaf, and get it into the oven, just at the time when it is as light as it can be made by the vinous fermentation, and before the acetous fermentation commences.

If, however, by any means there should unfortunately be a little acidity in the dough, take a small quantity of saleratus, or, what is better, carbonate of soda, and dissolve it in some warm water, and carefully work in just enough to neutralize the acid. The best bread-makers are so exceedingly careful on this point, that they dip their fingers into the solution of saleratus or soda, and thrust them into the dough in every part, as they work it over, so as to be sure that they get in just enough to neutralize the acid, and not a particle more.

I must here repeat, that they who would have the very best of bread, must always consider it a cause of regret, that there should be any necessity to use alkali; because the acetous fermentation cannot in any degree take place, without commensurately and irremediably impairing the quality of the bread. And here it should be remarked, that dough made of wheat meal will take on the acetous fermentation, or become sour, sooner than that made of fine flour. This is probably owing principally to the mucilage contained in the bran, which runs into the acetous fermentation sooner than starch.

While the dough is rising, preparations should be made for baking it. Some bake their bread in a brick oven, some in a stove, some in a reflector, and some in a baking kettle. In all these ways very good bread may be baked; but the baking kettle is decidedly the most objectionable. Probably there is no better and more certain way of baking bread well than in the use of the brick oven. Good bread-makers, accustomed to brick ovens, can always manage them with a very great degree of certainty; and as a general fact, bread is sweeter, baked in this way, than in any other. Yet, when it is well baked in tin reflectors, it is certainly very fine; and so it is also when well baked in iron stoves. But the baking of bread requires almost as much care and judgment as any part of the process of bread-making. If the oven is too hot, the bread will burn on the outside before it is done in the centre; if it is too cold, the bread will be heavy, raw and sour. If the heat is much greater from below than from above, the bottom of the loaf will burn before the top is done: or if the heat is much greater from above than from below, the top of the loaf will burn before the bottom is done.

All these points therefore must be carefully attended to; and no small excuse ought to be considered a satisfactory apology for sour, heavy, raw or burnt bread; for it is hardly possible to conceive of an absolute necessity for such results; and the cases are extremely rare in which they are not the offspring of downright and culpable carelessness.

The best bread-makers I have ever known, watch over their bread troughs while their dough is rising, and over their ovens while it is baking, with about as much care and attention as a mother watches over the cradle of her sick child.