Receipt 8.—Another way: Wheat meal, six quarts; molasses and yeast, each a teacup full. Mould into loaves half the thickness you mean they shall be after they are baked. Place them in the pans, in a temperature which will cause a moderate fermentation. When risen enough, place them in the oven. A strong heat is required.
Receipt 9.—Rye bread may be made in a similar way. It must, however, be well kneaded, to secure an intimate mixture with the yeast. Does not require quite so strong a heat as the former.
Receipt 10.—Oat meal bread may be prepared by mixing good kiln dried oat meal, a little salt and warm water, and a spoonful of yeast. Beat till it is quite smooth, and rather a thick batter; cover and let it stand to rise; then bake it on a hot iron plate, or on a bake stove. Be careful not to burn it.
Receipt 11.—Barley, or black bread, as it is called in Europe, makes a wholesome article of food. It may be fermented or unfermented.
Receipt 12.—Corn bread is sometimes made thus: Six pints meal, four pints water, one spoonful of salt; mix well, and bake in oblong rolls two inches thick. Bake in a hot oven.
It should be added to this division of my subject, that in baking bread sweet oil may be used (a vegetable oil) as a substitute for animal oil, to prevent the bread from adhering too closely. Or you may sift a quantity of Indian meal into the pans. If you use sweet, or olive oil, be sure to get that which is not rancid. Much of the olive oil of the shops is unfit to be used.
DIVISION II.—WHOLE GRAINS.
Some have maintained that since man is made to live on grain, fruits, etc., and since the most perfect mastication is secured by the use of uncooked grains, it is useless, and worse than useless, to resort to cookery at all, especially the cookery of bread. I have mentioned Dr. Schlemmer and his followers already as holding this opinion. Many of these people confine themselves to the use of uncooked grains and fruits. They do not cook their beans and peas. Nor can it be denied that they enjoy thus far very good health.
Now, while I admit that man, as an individual, can get along very well in this way, I am most fully persuaded that many kinds of farinaceous food are improved by cookery. Of the potato, I have already, incidentally, spoken. But are not wheat and corn, and many other grains, as well as the potato, improved by cookery? A barrel of flour (one hundred and ninety-six pounds) will make about two hundred and seventy pounds of good dry bread. It does not appear that the bread contains more water than the grain did from which it was made. Whence, then, the increase of weight by seventy-four pounds? Is not the water—a part of it, at least—which is used in making bread, rendered solid, as water is in slacking lime; or at least so incorporated with the flour or meal as to add both to its weight, and to its nutritious properties?
Or if, in the present infancy of the science of domestic chemistry, we are not able to give a satisfactory answer to the question, is not an affirmative highly probable? Such an answer would give no countenance, I believe, to the custom of raising our bread, since the increase of weight in making unfermented cakes or loaves, is about as great as in the case of fermented ones.