The making of bread is, to a large degree, a chemical operation, and should be carried on with as much accuracy as a chemist would use in his laboratory.
The flour should be weighed or measured. The other ingredients should also be weighed or measured accurately.
Temperature is a particularly important factor in making good bread. Do not let sponge or dough get chilled.
When potatoes are used, be sure that they are sound, white and mealy, and in the fall, when the new crop is on the market, be careful that the potatoes are fully ripe. More failures in bread making are due to the use of potatoes, which are thought to be ripe, but which are not fully matured, than any other one thing.
In making cake, a difference may be noted if the eggs are large or small, if small use either more eggs or more water or milk.
RECIPE FOR BREAD
(University of Nevada Method)
Ingredients:
Warm flour in oven
2 cups milk, scalded,
2 cups potato water,
yeast in ½ cup luke warm water,
2 medium potatoes, mashed veryfine
1 teaspoonful salt,
1 tablespoonful sugar,
1 cake
1 teaspoonful lard.
Preparation:
Add flour until mixture has appearance of cake batter; beat with wooden spoon until very light. Let stand.
Add flour and knead until smooth, brush butter over top of dough, cover and let raise to twice original size.
Mould into loaves and let raise twenty minutes.
Put in very hot oven for ten minutes, then bake in slow oven forty-five minutes.
WHITE BREAD (Quick Method)
Ingredients
1 quart flour sifted,
½ teaspoonful salt,
1 cup or ½ pint milk or water,
2 teaspoonful sugar,
1 cake compressed yeast,
1 tablespoonful melted butter.
Preparation:
Dissolve yeast by breaking into a cup and adding 1 teaspoon sugar, mix and let it stand 3 minutes.
Sift flour in a bowl, make well in center, and add water, salt, sugar, butter and yeast, mix and knead well, put in a warm place to raise 11/2 hours, or until light.
Turn out on molding board, knead lightly, shape into loaves, put in well-buttered pans, let raise ¾ hour. Bake 45 minutes.
WHOLE WHEAT BREAD
Ingredients:
Whole wheat flour, 1 pint milk, 1/2 cup sugar,
1 teaspoonful salt, 1 compressed yeast cake,
1 pint water,
Preparation:
Scald the milk and add the water. When luke warm add salt, sugar, yeast cake (dissolved in 2 tablespoons water) and sufficient whole wheat flour to make a batter that will drop from the spoon. Beat continuously for 5 minutes. Cover and let stand in a warm place for 3 hours; then add sufficient Whole Wheat flour to make a dough. Knead at once into loaves. Put in small greased pans, cover and stand in warm place for an hour. Bake in a moderately quick over 45 minutes.
GRAHAM BREAD
Ingredients:
2 quarts Graham Flour,
1 tablespoonful salt,
2 cups potato water,
1 small cup molasses or sugar,
1 yeast cake,
1 tablespoonful melted lard. 1 quart flour
Preparation:
Dissolve yeast cake in lukewarm water. Mix all ingredients into as stiff a dough as can be stirred with a spoon, adding lukewarm water to make it the proper consistency. Let it stand overnight. In the morning stir it down with a spoon thoroughly. Have bread tins greased. Fill each one about 1/2 full and let rise to the top of the pans. Bake in moderate oven 1 hour for good-sized loaves.
RYE BREAD
Ingredients:
1 pint milk,
1/2 teaspoonful salt,
1 pint water,
1 compressed yeast cake.
Preparation:
Scald the milk, add the water and salt, and when the mixture is luke-warm add the yeast, moistened in two tablespoons warm water.
Add sufficient Rye flour to make a batter, and beat thoroughly for ten minutes. Cover and stand in a warm place for 21/2 hours. Knead this dough quickly until it loses its stickiness. Divide it into three or four loaves, put each loaf in a square pan;
Cover and stand for an hour in the same warm place, about 75 Fahr., until it has doubled in bulk, brush the top quickly with warm water and put it in a hot oven. When brown, reduce the heat and bake 3/4 of an hour.
Turn each loaf from the pan; stand on a board covered with a cloth but do not cover the loaves. It is better to tip the board so that the air may circulate around the entire loaf. This makes a nice crisp crust.
RAISIN BREAD
Dissolve a tablespoon each of butter and lard in a cup of hot milk then add a cup of either cold water or milk to the hot milk to make lukewarm. Sift a quart of flour with one teaspoon of salt, three tablespoons of sugar, make a hole in center of flour and stir in half a cake of compressed yeast, which has been dissolved in a little lukewarm water;
Add part of your milk, stirring in the flour, then break in one or two eggs and the rest of the milk; beat up the dough lightly, which must be a stiff batter.
Let it raise all night in a warm place and well covered. In the morning add a cupful each of raisins and currants, two tablespoons of sugar and either some nutmeg or caraway seeds or lemon peel. Make into two loaves, working very little; let rise very light and bake three-quarters of an hour.
HOMEMADE PRIZE RAISIN BREAD
Make a sponge of 1 cake of compressed yeast with 1 tablespoonful sugar dissolved in 1/2 cup lukewarm water. To 1 cup of scalded milk add 1 cup of hot water and when lukewarm add the yeast and 2 cups white flour and beat for five minutes.
Let rise until very light. Then add 3 tablespoonful each of sugar and cream together, 1 teaspoonful salt and 1/2 cups Seeded Raisins cut in halves.
Stir in flour until stiff, then knead until dough is smooth and elastic, using 6 to 8 cups of flour. Cover to let rise and when light, double in bulk, mould into loaves, and when again light bake about one hour.