Bonny-Clabber, or Loppered-Milk. ✠
Set a china or glass dish of skimmed milk away in a warm place, covered. When it turns—i. e., becomes a smooth, firm, but not tough cake, like blanc-mange—serve in the same dish. Cut out carefully with a large spoon, and put in saucers, with cream, powdered sugar, and nutmeg to taste. It is better, if set on the ice for an hour before it is brought to table. Do not let it stand until the whey separates from the curd.
Few people know how delicious this healthful and cheap dessert can be made, if eaten before it becomes tart and tough, with a liberal allowance of cream and sugar. There are not many jellies and creams superior to it.
Rennet.
Clean the stomach of a calf (or have your butcher do it for you) as soon as it is killed, scouring inside and out with salt. When perfectly clean, tack upon a frame to dry in the sun for a day. Cut in squares, and pack down in salt, or keep in wine or brandy. When you wish to use the salted, soak half an hour in cold water, wash well, and put into the milk to be turned, tied to a string, that it may be drawn out without breaking the curd. The liquor rennet sold by druggists is sometimes good, quite as often worthless. You can, however, get the dried or salted in the markets, and often in the drug-stores.
Mountain Custard, or Junket. ✠
Take a piece of rennet an inch long, or a teaspoonful of the wine in which rennet is kept, to each quart of milk. Season with vanilla or lemon, a little nutmeg, and a tablespoonful of sugar to each part. More will retard the formation. Set in a warm place—near the fire, or on the kitchen table—closely covered. Look at it from time to time, and if, in the course of an hour, there are no signs of stiffening, add more rennet. When it is firm, like blanc-mange, and before the whey separates from the curd, remove the rennet, and set upon ice until it is wanted. Serve with powdered sugar and cream.
Thickened Milk.
Boil a quart of milk, add a very little salt, and two tablespoonfuls of rice or wheat flour wet in cold milk. Stir in smoothly, and let it thicken in a vessel of boiling water, keeping the outer saucepan at a hard boil for half an hour. Eat with butter and sugar, or with cream and sugar. For invalids, or children who are suffering with summer disorders, boil at least an hour, stirring very often.
Cheese.
I have doubted the utility of inserting a receipt for regular cheese-making. The apparatus necessary for the manufacture is seldom, if ever, found in a private family, while cheese can be had in every country store at one-third the expense to an amateur of making it. But, remembering that it may be a pleasant, if not profitable experiment, for the mistress of many cows to make at her odd moments, I have secured what purports to be an exact description of “cheese-making on a small scale.”
To each gallon of milk warm from the cow, add a piece of rennet six inches long and three wide, or two tablespoonfuls rennet water—i. e., water in which rennet has been boiled. Cover, and set in a warm place until it becomes a firm curd; this should be, at the most, not more than three-quarters of an hour. When the whey has separated entirely, and looks clear and greenish, wash your hands very clean, and with them gently press all the curd to one side of the pan or tub, while an assistant dips out the whey. Have ready a stout linen bag, pour the curd into it, and hang it up to dry until not another drop of whey can be pressed out; then put the curd into a wooden dish, and chop it fine. Empty into a finer bag, and put into a small cheese-box, or other circular wooden box with a perforated bottom, and a lid that slides down easily but closely on the inside. Your bag should be as nearly as possible the same shape and size as this box. Lay heavy weights upon the top, in lack of a cheese-press, and let it stand an hour. The cloth should be wet inside as well as out, before you put the curds in. At the end of the hour, take out the cheese and chop again, adding salt this time. Have ready a fresh wet cloth; pack in the curd hard. There should be a circular cover for this bag, which must be basted all around, and very smooth on top. Scald the box and cover, then rinse with cold water, and put the cheese again under press for twelve hours. Next day, take it out, rub all over with salt, and fit on a clean wet cloth. Look at it sixteen hours later, pare off the rough edges, and scrape the sides of inequalities before returning to the press for the last time. Let it remain under the weights for twenty-four hours. Strip off the cloth, rub the cheese well with butter, and lay upon a clean cloth spread on a shelf in a cool, dry place. A wire-safe is best. Wipe clean; then rub every day with butter for a week, and turn also every twenty-four hours. At the end of the week, omit the greasing, and rub hard with a coarse cloth. Do this every day for a month. Your cheese will then be eatable, but it will be much finer six months later.
Stilton cheeses—renowned over the world—are buried in dry heather when they are firm enough to remove from the shelves, and kept there a month. This is called “ripening.”
Cottage Cheese.
Heat sour milk until the whey rises to the top. Pour it off, put the curd in a bag and let it drip six hours, without squeezing it. Put in a wooden bowl, chop fine with a wooden spoon, salt to taste, and work to the consistency of soft putty, adding a little cream and butter as you proceed. Mould with your hands into round “pats” or balls, and keep in a cool place. It is best when fresh.
Cream Cheese.
Stir a little salt into a pan of “loppered” cream. Pour into a linen bag, and let it drain three days, changing the bag every day. Then pack into a wooden cup or mould with holes in the bottom, and press two hours. Wet the mould with cold water before putting in the cream-curd. Wrapped in soft white paper—two or three folds of tissue paper will do—to exclude the air, they will keep in a cool place for a week.
This is the cheese sold in this country under the name of Neufchatel.
BREAD.
If eminence of importance entitled a subject to pre-eminence of position, that of which we are now about to speak should have stood foremost in this work. It is not a pleasant thing to think or write about, but it is a stubborn fact, that upon thousands of tables, in otherwise comfortable homes, good bread is an unknown phenomenon. I say phenomenon, because it would indeed be a marvellous estrangement of cause and effect were indifferent flour, unskillfully mixed with flat yeast, badly risen and negligently baked, to result in that pride of the notable housekeeper—light, sweet, wholesome bread. I know a household where sour, stiff bread is the rule, varied several times during the week by muffins scented and colored with soda, clammy biscuit, and leathery griddle-cakes; another where the bread is invariably over-risen, and consequently tasteless, sometimes slightly acid; yet another in which home-made bread is not used at all because it is “so troublesome and uncertain,” the mistress preferring to feed her family, growing children and all, upon the vari-colored sponges bought at the bakers—sponges inflated with sal volatile, flavorless, and dry as chips when a day old, and too often betraying, in the dark streaks running through the interior of the loaf, want of cleanliness in the kneader. Yet these are all well-to-do people, who submit to these abominations partly because they do not know how badly off they are—chiefly because it is their way of doing, and they see no reason for changing. “I have been a housekeeper for thirty years, and have always mixed my bread just so,” retorted a mistress once, when I mildly set forth the advantages of “setting a sponge” over-night. “I put in flour, yeast, and milk if I have it, and give them a good stir; then set the dough down to rise. Our folks don’t fancy very light bread. There don’t seem to be any substance in it—so to speak. Mine generally turns out pretty nice. It’s all luck, after all, about bread.”
“I’m told you have a receipt for making bread,” laughed another to me; “I never heard of such a thing in my life, and I’ve been keeping house eighteen years. So I thought I’d call and ask you for it—just as a curiosity, you know. I want to see what it is like.”
I wisely kept my thoughts to myself, and dictated the receipt, which she jotted down in a memorandum-book laughing all the while at the “excellent joke.”
“You really use this?” she demanded, when this was done.
“I do. I have used no other for many years.”
“And the bread I ate upon your table, the other night, was made according to this?”
Again an affirmative answer.
“I guess your cook could tell another story,” rejoined the skeptic. “You can’t make me believe that bread is made by rule. I put my materials together anyhow, and I have as good luck as most of my neighbors.”
I regarded my visitor as an impertinent simpleton; but I have been amazed, in subsequent years, at finding that her creed is that of hundreds of housewives more or less sensible. “Luck” rules the baking, and upon the shoulders of this Invisible are laid the deficiencies of the complacent cook. Cheap flour and laziness are at the bottom of more mishaps in the bread line than any other combination of circumstances. From the inferior grades of flour, it is possible to make tolerable biscuit, crumpets, and muffins, plain pastry, and very good griddle-cakes. You cannot, by any stretch of art, produce excellent bread from poor flour. It is no economy to purchase it for this purpose. It is judicious to lay in two barrels at a time, and to use the best only for the semi- or tri-weekly baking.
Chiefest then among the conditions to good bread, I place good “family” flour—dry, elastic, and odorless. Whiteness is a secondary consideration, although, to American eyes, this is a recommendation. A little experience will teach you to detect the signs that foretell satisfactory baking-days, and vice versâ. If in handling the flour you discern a heaviness like that of ground plaster; if in squeezing a handful tightly you discover that it retains the imprint of palm and fingers, and rolls back into the tray a compact ball or roll; if it is in the least musty, or sour, use it very sparingly in your trial-baking, for the chances are as ten to one that you will head the barrel up again and return it to your grocer.
Sometimes new flour can be ripened for use by sifting enough for each baking into a large tray, and exposing it to the hot sun for some hours, or by setting it upon the kitchen hearth for the same time. And it not unfrequently happens that flour improves greatly after the barrel has been open for several days or weeks. It dries out and becomes lighter, more elastic. Next in importance to the quality of the flour is that of the yeast. This should be light in color and lively, effervescing easily when shaken, and emitting an odor like weak ammonia. If dull or sour, it is bad. In cities it is easiest, perhaps cheapest, to buy yeast from a brewery or bakery, exercising your discrimination as to quality. Unless you can satisfy yourself in this regard, you had better make your own. I can confidently recommend the receipts given in this work as easy and safe, having tried them in my own family.
Novices in bread-making, and many who should have learned better by long experience, fall into a sad mistake in the consistency of the dough. It should be mixed as soft as it can be handled. Bread will rise sooner and higher, be lighter and more digestible, and keep fresh much longer, if this rule be followed. Stiff bread is close in texture, often waxy to the teeth, and after a day or so becomes very hard.
Set the dough to rise in a moderately warm place, and keep it in an even temperature. There is force in the old lament—“My bread took cold, last night.” Cold arrests the process of fermentation. There is a chance, should this occur, that a removal to a more genial atmosphere and careful nursing may cure the congestion, should it be only partial. Too much heat carries forward the work too rapidly. In this case, you will find your dough puffy and sour. Correct the latter evil by dissolving a little soda or saleratus in hot water, and working it well in.
Knead your bread faithfully and from all sides, until it rebounds like india-rubber after a smart blow of the fist upon the centre of the mass.
The oven should not be too hot. If you cannot hold your bare arm within it while you count thirty, it is too quick. Keep the heat steady after the bread goes in. Too much fire at first, and rapidly cooling, produce the effect upon the bread which is technically called “slack-baked,” i. e., the inside of the loaf is never properly done. Practice and intelligent observation will, in time, make you an adept in the management of your ovens. If the bread rises rapidly while baking, and the crust begins to form before the lower part of the loaf is baked, cover the top with clean paper until you are ready to brown it.
Grate away the burned portions of the crust, should there be such. This is better than chipping with a knife. One of the best bread-makers I know bakes in round pans, each loaf by itself, and grates the whole outer surface, top, bottom, and sides, quickly and lightly, toning down the brown to a uniform and pleasing tint. Tilt your loaves upon the edge, the lower part resting upon the table, the upper supported by the wall or other upright object, and throw a coarse dry cloth over them until they cool. This position allows the air to get at all sides, and prevents “sweating.” A tin bread-box is best, with a cloth at bottom and enwrapping the loaves.
Yeast (Hop.) ✠
- 4 large potatoes, or six small.
- 2 quarts cold water.
- Double handful hops, tied in a coarse muslin bag.
- 4 tablespoonfuls flour.
- 2 tablespoonfuls white sugar.
Peel the potatoes, and put them with the hop-bag into a saucepan containing two quarts cold water. Cover and boil until the potatoes break and fall apart. Take these out with a perforated skimmer, leaving the water still boiling, mash them fine with a potato-beetle, and work in the flour and sugar. Moisten this gradually with the boiling hop tea, stirring it to a smooth paste. When all the tea has been mixed in, set it aside to cool. While still slightly warm, add four tablespoonfuls of lively yeast, and turn all into a large open vessel to “work.” Keep this in a warm place until it ceases to bubble up, or until next day. In summer it will work well in a few hours. When quite light, put in earthen jars with small mouths, in which fit corks, or bottle it, and remove to ice-house or cellar. It will keep good for a fortnight—longer in winter.
When you wish to use it for baking, send a small vessel to the cellar for the desired quantity, and re-cork at once. A half-hour in a hot kitchen may spoil it.
Yeast (Self-working).
- 8 potatoes.
- 2 ounces hops.
- 4 quarts cold water.
- 1 lb. flour.
- ½ lb. white sugar.
- 1 tablespoonful salt.
Tie the hops in a coarse muslin bag, and boil one hour in four quarts of water. Let it cool to lukewarmness before removing the bag. Wet with the tepid liquor—a little at a time—the flour, making to a smooth paste. Put in the sugar and salt, beat up the batter three minutes before adding the rest of the tea. Set it away for two days in an open bowl covered with a thin cloth, in a closet which is moderately and evenly warm.
On the third day peel, boil, and mash the potatoes, and when entirely free from lumps and specks, stir in gradually the thickened hop-liquor. Let it stand twelve hours longer in the bowl, stirring often, and keeping it in the warm kitchen. Then bottle or put away in corked jars, which must be perfectly sweet and freshly scalded. This will keep a month in a cool cellar. It is more troublesome to make it than other kinds of yeast, but it needs no other “rising” to excite fermentation, and remains good longer than that made in the usual way.
Yeast (Potato.) ✠
- 6 potatoes.
- 2 quarts cold water.
- 4 tablespoonfuls flour.
- 2 tablespoonfuls white sugar.
Peel and boil the potatoes until they break. Leaving the water on the fire, take them out and mash fine with the flour and sugar, wetting gradually with the hot water until it is all used. When lukewarm, add a gill of good yeast, and set aside in an open vessel and warm place to ferment. When it ceases to effervesce, bottle and set in ice-house.
This yeast is very nice and white, and is preferred by many who dislike the bitter taste of hops. It is also convenient to make when hops cannot be obtained.
Yeast Cakes. ✠
- 2 quarts water (cold.)
- 1 quart pared and sliced potatoes.
- Double-handful hops, tied in coarse muslin bag.
- Flour to make stiff batter.
- 1 cup Indian meal.
Boil the potatoes and hop-bag in two quarts of water for three-quarters of an hour. Remove the hops, and while boiling hot, strain the potatoes and water through a cullender into a bowl. Stir into the scalding liquor enough flour to make a stiff batter. Beat all up well; add two tablespoonfuls lively yeast and set in a warm place to rise. When light, stir in a cup of Indian meal, roll into a sheet a quarter of an inch thick, and cut into round cakes. Dry these in the hot sun, or in a very moderate oven, taking care they do not heat to baking. It is best to put them in after the fire has gone down for the night, and leave them in until morning. When entirely dry and cold, hang them up in a bag in a cool, dry place.
Use one cake three inches in diameter for a loaf of fair size; soak in tepid water until soft, and add a pinch of soda or saleratus, then mix.
These cakes will remain good a month in summer, two in winter.
Baking Powders.
- 1 ounce super-carbonate soda.
- 7 drachms tartaric acid—(in powder.)
Roll smoothly and mix thoroughly. Keep in a tight glass jar or bottle. Use one teaspoonful to a quart of flour.
Or,
- 12 teaspoonfuls carb. soda.
- 24 teaspoonfuls cream tartar.
Put as above, and use in like proportion.
Bread Sponge (Potato.) ✠
- 6 potatoes, boiled and mashed fine while hot.
- 6 tablespoonfuls baker’s yeast.
- 2 tablespoonfuls white sugar.
- 2 tablespoonfuls lard.
- 1 even teaspoonful soda.
- 1 quart warm—not hot—water.
- 3 cups flour.
Mash the potatoes, and work in the lard and sugar. Stir to a cream, mixing in gradually a quart of the water in which the potatoes were boiled, which should have been poured out to cool down to blood warmth. Beat in the flour, already wet up with a little potato-water to prevent lumping, then the yeast, lastly the soda. Cover lightly if the weather is warm, more closely in winter, and set to rise over night in a warm place.
Bread Sponge (Plain.) ✠
- 1 quart warm water.
- 6 tablespoonfuls baker’s yeast.
- 2 tablespoonfuls lard.
- 2 tablespoonfuls white sugar.
- 1 teaspoonful soda.
- Flour to make a soft batter.
Melt the lard in the warm water, add the sugar, then the flour by degrees, stirring in smoothly. A quart and a pint of flour will usually be sufficient if the quality is good. Next comes the yeast, lastly the soda. Beat up hard for several minutes, and set to rise as above.
Bread mixed with potato-sponge is more nutritious, keeps fresh longer, and is sweeter than that made with the plainer sponge, But there are certain seasons of the year when good old potatoes cannot be procured, and new ones will not do for this purpose.
The potato-sponge is safer, because surer for beginners in the important art of bread-making. After using it for fifteen years, I regard it as almost infallible—given the conditions of good flour, yeast, kneading, and baking.
Family Bread (White.) ✠
Having set your sponge over night, or, if you bake late in the afternoon, early in the morning, sift dry flour into a deep bread-tray, and strew a few spoonfuls of fine salt over it. The question of the quantity of flour is a delicate one, requiring judgment and experience. Various brands of flour are so unequal with respect to the quantity of gluten they contain, that it is impossible to give any invariable rule on this subject. It will be safe, however, to sift two quarts and a pint, if you have set the potato-sponge; two quarts for the plain. This will make two good-sized loaves. Make a hole in the middle of the heap, pour in the risen sponge (which should be very light and seamed in many places on the top), and work down the flour into it with your hands. If too soft, add more flour. If you can mould it at all, it is not too soft. If stiff, rinse out the bowl in which the sponge was set with a little lukewarm water, and work this in. When you have it in manageable shape, begin to knead. Work the mass into a ball—your hands having been well floured from the first; detach it from the tray, and lift it in your left hand, while you sprinkle flour with the right thickly over the bottom and sides of the tray. Toss back the ball into this, and knead hard—always toward the centre of the mass, which should be repeatedly turned over and around, that every portion may be manipulated. Brisk and long kneading makes the pores fine and regular. Gaping holes of diverse sizes are an unerring tell-tale of a careless cook. Spend at least twenty minutes—half an hour is better—in this kind of useful gymnastics. It is grand exercise for arms and chest. This done, work the dough into a shapely ball in the centre of the tray, sprinkle flour over the top; throw a cloth over all and leave it on the kitchen-table to rise, taking care it is not in a draught of cold air. In summer, it will rise in four or five hours—in winter, six are often necessary. It should come up steadily until it at least trebles its original bulk and the floured surface cracks all over. Knead again for ten or fifteen minutes. Then, divide it into as many parts as you wish loaves, and put these in well-greased pans for the final rising. In a large household baking, it is customary to mould the dough into oblong rolls, three or four, according to the number of loaves you desire, and to lay these close together in one large pan. The second kneading is done upon a floured board, and should be thorough as the first, the dough being continually shifted and turned. Set the pans in a warm place for an hour longer, with a cloth thrown over them to keep out the air and dust. Then bake, heeding the directions set down in the article upon bread in general. If your ovens are in good condition, one hour should bake the above quantity of bread. But here again experience must be your guide. Note carefully for yourself how long a time is required for your first successful baking, as also how much dry flour you have worked into your sponge, and let these data regulate future action. I have known a variation of two quarts in a large baking, over the usual measure of flour. I need not tell you that you had better shun a brand that requires such an excessive quantity to bring the dough to the right consistency. It is neither nutritious nor economical. When you make out the loaves, prick the top with the fork.
Do not make your first baking too large. Practice is requisite to the management of an unwieldy mass of dough. Let your trial-loaf be with say half the quantity of sponge and flour I have set down, and increase these as skill and occasion require, carefully preserving the proportions. Seven or eight quarts of flour will be needed for the semi-weekly baking of a family of moderate size.
If I have seemed needlessly minute in the directions I have laid down, it is because I wish to be a guide, not a betrayer, and because I am deeply impressed with the worth of such advice as may tend to diminish the number of those who know not for themselves the comfort and delight of eating from day to day, and year to year, good family bread.
Family Bread (Brown.) ✠
I wish it were in my power, by much and earnest speaking and writing, to induce every housekeeper to make brown bread—that is, bread made of unbolted, usually called Graham flour—a staple article of diet in her family. I only repeat the declaration of a majority of our best chemists and physicians when I say that our American fondness for fine white bread is a serious injury to our health. We bolt and rebolt our flour until we extract from it three-quarters of its nutritive qualities, leaving little strength in it except what lies in gluten or starch, and consign that which makes bone and tissue, which regulates the digestive organs, and leaves the blood pure, the brain clear, to the lower animals. Growing children especially should eat brown bread daily. It supplies the needed phosphate to the tender teeth and bones. If properly made, it soon commends itself to their taste, and white becomes insipid in comparison. Dyspeptics have long been familiar with its dietetic virtues, and, were the use of it more general, we should have fewer wretches to mourn over the destroyed coats of their stomachs. It is wholesome, sweet, honest, and should be popular.
Prepare a sponge as for white bread, using potatoes or while flour. My rule is to take out a certain quantity of the risen sponge on baking day, and set aside for brown bread. Put into a tray two parts Graham flour, one-third white, and to every quart of this allow a handful of Indian meal, with a teaspoonful of salt. Wet this up with the sponge, and when it is mixed, add, for a loaf of fair size, half a teacupful of molasses. The dough should be very soft. If there is not enough of the sponge to reduce it to the desired consistency, add a little blood-warm water. Knead it diligently and long. It will not rise so rapidly as the white flour, having more “body” to carry. Let it take its time; make into round, comfortable loaves, and set down again for the second rising, when you have again kneaded it. Bake steadily, taking care it does not burn, and do not cut while hot. The result will well repay you for your trouble. It will take a longer time to bake than white bread. Brown flour should not be sifted.
Boston Brown Bread.
Set a sponge over night, with potatoes or white flour, in the following proportions:—
- 1 cup yeast.
- 6 potatoes, mashed fine with three cups of flour.
- 1 quart warm water.
- 2 tablespoonfuls lard (or, if you leave out the potatoes, one quart of warm water to three pints of flour).
- 2 tablespoonfuls brown sugar.
Beat up well and let it rise five or six hours.
When light, sift into the bread-tray—
- 1 quart rye-flour.
- 2 quarts Indian meal.
- 1 tablespoonful salt.
- 1 teaspoonful soda, or saleratus.
Mix this up very soft with the risen sponge, adding warm water, if needed, and working in gradually
- Half a teacupful of molasses.
Knead well, and let it rise from six to seven hours. Then work over again, and divide into loaves, putting these in well-greased, round, deep pans. The second rising should last an hour, at the end of which time bake in a moderate oven about four hours. Rapid baking will ruin it. If put in late in the day, let it stay in the oven all night.
Rye Bread.
Set a sponge, as above, but with half the quantity of water.
In the morning mix with this:
- 1 quart warm milk.
- 1 tablespoonful salt.
- 1 cup Indian meal.
- And enough rye flour to make it into pliable dough.
Proceed as with wheat bread, baking it a little longer.
It is a mistake to suppose that acidity, greater or less, is the normal state of rye bread. If you find your dough in the slightest degree sour, correct by adding a teaspoonful of soda dissolved in warm water. It is safest to add this always in warm weather.
Milk Bread.
- 1 quart of milk.
- ½ teacupful of yeast.
- ¼ lb. butter, one tablespoonful white sugar.
Stir into the milk, which should be made blood-warm, a pint of flour, the sugar, lastly the yeast. Beat all together well, and let them rise five or six hours. Then melt the butter, and add with a little salt. Work in flour enough to make a stiff dough; let this rise four hours, and make into small loaves. Set near the fire for half an hour, and bake.
In warm weather, add a teaspoonful of soda, dissolved in warm water, to the risen sponge, as all bread mixed with milk is apt to sour.
Buttermilk Bread.
- 1 pint buttermilk heated to scalding.
Stir in, while it is hot, enough flour to make a tolerably thick batter. Add half a gill of yeast, and let it rise five or six hours. If you make it over night you need not add the yeast, but put in, instead, a tablespoonful of white sugar. In the morning, stir into the sponge a tablespoonful of soda, dissolved in hot water, a little salt, and two tablespoonfuls melted butter. Work in just flour enough to enable you to handle the dough comfortably; knead well, make into loaves, and let it rise until light.
This makes very white and wholesome bread.
Rice Bread.
Make a sponge of—
- 1 quart warm water.
- 1 teacupful yeast.
- 1 tablespoonful white sugar.
- 2 tablespoonfuls lard.
- 1 quart wheat flour.
Beat well together, and when it has risen, which will be in about five hours, add three pints of warm milk and three teacupfuls rice-flour wet to a thin paste with cold milk, and boiled four minutes as you would starch. This should be a little more than blood-warm when it is stirred into the batter. If not thick enough to make out into dough, add a little wheat-flour. Knead thoroughly, and treat as you would wheat bread in the matter of the two risings and baking.
This is nice and delicate for invalids, and keeps well. If you cannot procure the rice-flour, boil one cup of whole rice to a thin paste, mashing and beating it smooth.
French Rolls. (No. 1.) ✠
In kneading dough for the day’s baking, after adding and working in the risen sponge, set aside enough for a loaf of tea-rolls. Work into this a heaping tablespoonful of lard or butter, and let it stand in a tolerably cool place (not a cold or draughty one) for four hours. Knead it again, and let it alone for three hours longer. Then make into rolls, by rolling out, very lightly, pieces of the dough into round cakes, and folding these, not quite in the centre, like turn-overs. The third rising will be for one hour, then bake steadily half an hour or less, if the oven is quick.
Having seen these rolls, smoking, light, and delicious, upon my own table, at least twice a week for ten years, with scarcely a failure in the mixing or baking, I can confidently recommend the receipt and the product. You can make out part of your Graham dough in the same manner.
French Rolls. (No. 2.)
- 1 quart milk; new, warm milk is best.
- 1 teacup yeast.
- 1 quart and a pint of flour.
When this sponge is light, work in a well-beaten egg and two tablespoonfuls melted butter, with a teaspoonful of salt, half a teaspoonful soda dissolved in hot water, one tablespoonful white sugar and enough white flour to make a soft dough. Let this stand four or five hours, roll out into round cakes and fold as in No. 1, or shape with your hands into balls. Set these closely together in the baking-pan; let them rise one hour, and just before putting them into the oven, cut deeply across each ball with a sharp knife. This will make the cleft roll, so familiar to us in French restaurants. Bake half an hour.
Risen Biscuit. ✠
- 1 quart milk.
- ¾ cup lard or butter—half-and-half is a good rule.
- ¾ cup of yeast.
- 2 tablespoonfuls white sugar.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
- Flour to make a soft dough.
Mix over night, warming the milk slightly and melting the lard or butter. In the morning, roll out into a sheet three-quarters of an inch in thickness; cut into round cakes, set these closely together in a pan, let them rise for twenty minutes, and bake twenty minutes.
These delightful biscuits are even better if the above ingredients be set with half as much flour, in the form of a thin sponge, and the rest of the flour be worked in five hours later. Let this rise five hours more, and proceed as already directed. This is the best plan if the biscuits are intended for tea.
Sally Lunn. (No. 1.) ✠
- 1 quart of flour.
- 4 eggs.
- ½ cup melted butter.
- 1 cup warm milk.
- 1 cup warm water.
- 4 tablespoonfuls yeast.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
- ½ teaspoonful soda, dissolved in hot water.
Beat the eggs to a stiff froth, add the milk, water, butter, soda, and salt; stir in the flour to a smooth batter, and beat the yeast in well. Set to rise in a buttered pudding-dish, in which it must be baked and sent to table. Or, if you wish to turn it out, set to rise in a well-buttered mould. It will not be light under six hours. Bake steadily three-quarters of an hour, or until a straw thrust into it comes up clean. Eat while hot.
This is the genuine old-fashioned Sally Lunn, and will hardly give place even yet to the newer and faster compounds known under the same name.
Sally Lunn. (No. 2.) ✠
- 1 scant quart flour.
- 4 eggs.
- 1 teacupful milk.
- 1 teacupful lard and butter mixed.
- 1 teaspoonful cream-tartar.
- ½ teaspoonful soda, dissolved in hot water.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
Beat the eggs very light, yolks and whites separately, melt the shortening, sift the cream-tartar into the flour; add the whites the last thing.
Potato Biscuit.
- 8 potatoes of medium size, mashed very fine.
- 4 tablespoonfuls butter, melted.
- 2 cups milk, blood-warm.
- 1 cup yeast.
- Flour to make a thin batter.
- 2 tablespoonfuls white sugar.
Stir all the above ingredients together except the butter, and let the sponge rise until light—four or five hours will do; then add the melted butter with a little salt and flour, enough to make soft dough. Set aside this for four hours longer, roll out in a sheet three-quarters of an inch thick, cut into cakes; let these rise one hour, and bake.
Mrs. E——‘s Biscuit (Soda.) ✠
- 1 quart flour.
- 2 heaping tablespoonfuls of lard.
- 2 cups sweet—if you can get it—new milk.
- 1 teaspoonful soda.
- 2 teaspoonful cream-tartar.
- 1 saltspoonful of salt.
Rub the soda and cream-tartar into the flour, and sift all together before they are wet; then put in the salt; next the lard, rubbed into the prepared flour quickly and lightly; lastly, pour in the milk. Work out the dough rapidly, kneading with as few strokes as possible, since handling injures the biscuit. If properly prepared the dough will have a rough surface and the biscuit be flaky. The dough should also be very soft. If the flour stiffen it too much, add more milk. Roll out lightly, cut into cakes at least half an inch thick, and bake in a quick oven. The biscuit made by the friend from whom I had this receipt were marvels of lightness and sweetness. I have often thought of them since with regretful longing, when set down to so-called “soda-biscuit,” marbled with greenish-yellow streaks, and emitting, when split, an odor which was in itself an eloquent dissuasive to an educated appetite. Few cooks make really good, quick biscuit—why, I am unable to say, unless upon the principle of “brains will tell.” I have had more than one in my kitchen, who, admirable in almost every other respect, were absolutely unfit to be intrusted with this simple yet delicate manufacture. The common fault is to have too “heavy a hand” with soda, and to “guess at” the quantities, instead of measuring them. Eat while warm.
Graham Biscuit. ✠
- 3 cups Graham flour.
- 1 cup white flour.
- 3 cups milk.
- 2 tablespoonfuls lard.
- 1 heaping tablespoonful white sugar.
- 1 saltspoonful of salt.
- 1 teaspoonful of soda.
- 2 teaspoonfuls cream-tartar.
Mix and bake as you do the white soda-biscuit (Mrs. E——‘s). They are good cold as well as hot.
Minute Biscuit.
- 1 pint sour, or buttermilk.
- 1 teaspoonful soda.
- 2 teaspoonfuls melted butter.
Flour to make soft dough—just stiff enough to handle. Mix, roll, and cut out rapidly, with as little handling as may be, and bake in a quick oven.
Graham Wheatlets.
- 1 pint Graham flour.
- Nearly a quart of boiling water or milk.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
Scald the flour, when you have salted it, into as soft dough as you can handle. Roll it nearly an inch thick, cut in round cakes, lay upon a hot buttered tin or pan, and bake them in the hottest oven you can get ready. Everything depends upon heat in the manufacture of these. Some cooks spread them on a hot tin, and set this upon a red-hot stove. Properly scalded and cooked, they are light as puffs, and very good; otherwise they are flat and tough. Split and butter while hot.
Sweet Rusk. ✠
- 1 pint warm milk.
- ½ cup of butter.
- 1 cup of sugar.
- 2 eggs.
- 1 teaspoonful of salt.
- 2 tablespoonfuls yeast.
Make a sponge with the milk, yeast, and enough flour for a thin batter, and let it rise over night. In the morning add the butter, eggs, and sugar, previously beaten up well together, the salt, and flour enough to make a soft dough. Mould with the hands into balls of uniform size, set close together in a pan, and let them rise until very light. After baking, wash the tops with a clean soft cloth dipped in molasses and water.
Dried Rusk. ✠
- 1 pint of warm milk.
- 2 eggs.
- ½ teacup of butter.
- Half a cup of yeast.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
Set a sponge with these ingredients, leaving out the eggs, and stirring in flour until you have a thick batter. Early next morning add the well-beaten eggs, and flour enough to enable you to roll out the dough. Let this rise in the bread-bowl two hours. Roll into a sheet nearly an inch thick, cut into round cakes, and arrange in your baking-pan two deep, laying one upon the other carefully. Let these stand for another half-hour, and bake.
These are now very nice for eating, and you may, if you like, reserve a plateful for tea; but the rule for the many, handed down through, I am afraid to say how many generations, in the family where I first ate this novel and delightful biscuit, is to divide the twins, thus leaving one side of each cake soft, and piling them loosely in the pan, set them in the oven when the fire is declining for the night, and leave them in until morning. Then, still obeying the traditions of revered elders, put them in a clean muslin bag, and hang them up in the kitchen. They will be fit to eat upon the third day. Put as many as you need in a deep dish, and pour over them iced milk, or water, if you cannot easily procure the former. Let them soak until soft, take them out, drain them for a minute in a shallow plate, and eat with butter. Invalids and children crave them eagerly. Indeed, I have seen few refuse them who had ever tasted them before. There is a pastoral flavor about the pleasant dish, eaten with the accompaniment of fresh berries, on a summer evening, that appeals to the better impulses of one’s appetite.
Try my soaked rusk—not forgetting to ice the milk—and you will find out for yourself what I mean, but cannot quite express.
Dried rusk will keep for weeks, and grow better every day. The only risk is in their being eaten up before they attain maturity.
Butter Crackers.
- 1 quart of flour.
- 3 tablespoonfuls butter.
- ½ teaspoonful soda, dissolved in hot water.
- 1 saltspoonful salt.
- 2 cups sweet milk.
Rub the butter into the flour, or, what is better, cut it up with a knife or chopper, as you do in pastry; add the salt, milk, and soda, mixing well. Work into a ball, lay upon a floured board, and beat with a rolling-pin half an hour, turning and shifting the mass often. Roll into an even sheet, a quarter of an inch thick, or less, prick deeply with a fork, and bake hard in a moderate oven. Hang them up in a muslin bag in the kitchen for two days to dry.
Wafers. ✠
- 1 pound of flour.
- 2 tablespoonfuls butter.
- A little salt.
Mix with sweet milk into a stiff dough, roll out very thin, cut into round cakes, and again roll these as thin as they can be handled. Lift them carefully, lay in a pan, and bake very quickly.
These are extremely nice, especially for invalids. They should be hardly thicker than writing-paper. Flour the baking-pan instead of greasing.
Crumpets (Sweet.)
- 1 pint raised dough.
- 3 eggs.
- 3 tablespoonfuls butter.
- ½ cup white sugar.
When your bread has passed its second rising, work into the above-named quantity the melted butter, then the eggs and sugar, beaten together until very light. Bake in muffin-rings about twenty minutes.
Crumpets (Plain.) ✠
- 3 cups warm milk.
- ½ cup yeast.
- 2 tablespoonfuls melted butter.
- 1 saltspoonful salt, and the same of soda, dissolved in hot water.
- Flour to make good batter.
Set these ingredients—leaving out the butter and soda—as a sponge. When very light, beat in the melted butter, with a very little flour, to prevent the butter from thinning the batter too much; stir in the soda hard, fill pattypans or muffin-rings with the mixture, and let them stand fifteen minutes before baking.
This is an excellent, easy, and economical receipt.
Graham Muffins. ✠
- 3 cups Graham flour.
- 1 cup white flour.
- 1 quart of milk.
- ¾ cup yeast.
- 1 tablespoonful lard or butter.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
- 2 tablespoonfuls sugar.
Set to rise over night, and bake in muffin-rings twenty minutes in a quick oven. Eat hot.
Queen Muffins. ✠
- 1 quart of milk.
- ¾ cup of yeast.
- 2 tablespoonfuls white sugar.
- 1 tablespoonful of lard or butter.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
- Flour to make a good batter.
- 4 eggs.
Set the batter—leaving out the eggs—to rise over night. In the morning beat the eggs very light, stir into the batter, and bake in muffin-rings twenty minutes in a quick oven.
Cream Muffins. ✠
- 1 quart sweet milk (half-cream, if you can get it).
- 1 quart flour—heaping.
- 6 eggs.
- 1 tablespoonful butter, and the same of lard—melted together.
Beat the eggs light—the yolks and whites separately; add the milk, with a little salt, then the shortening, lastly the flour, stirring in lightly. Bake immediately in well-greased rings half-filled with the batter. Your oven should be hot, and the muffins sent to table so soon as they are taken up.
Buttermilk Muffins.
- 1 quart buttermilk, or “loppered” sweet milk.
- 2 eggs.
- 1 teaspoonful soda, dissolved in hot water.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
- Flour to make good batter.
Beat the eggs well and stir them into the milk, beating hard all the while; add the flour and salt, and at the last the soda. Bake at once in a quick oven.
“Mother’s” Muffins. ✠
- 1 pint milk.
- 1 egg.
- 1 tablespoonful lard.
- ½ cup yeast.
- Flour for stiff batter.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
Set to rise over night.
Charlotte Muffins. ✠
- 1 quart of flour.
- 3 eggs—the whites and yolks beaten separately and until stiff.
- 3 cups of milk. If sour, no disadvantage, if soda be added.
- A little salt.
The excellence of these depends upon thorough beating and quick baking.
Rice Muffins. ✠
- 1 cup cold boiled rice.
- 1 pint of flour.
- 2 eggs.
- 1 quart of milk, or enough to make thin batter.
- 1 tablespoonful lard or butter.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
Beat hard and bake quickly.
Hominy Muffins. ✠
- 2 cups fine hominy—boiled and cold.
- 3 eggs.
- 3 cups sour milk. If sweet, add one teaspoonful cream tartar.
- ½ cup melted butter.
- 2 teaspoonfuls salt.
- 2 tablespoonfuls white sugar.
- 1 large cup flour.
- 1 teaspoonful soda.
Beat the hominy smooth; stir in the milk, then the butter, salt, and sugar; next the eggs, which should first be well beaten; then the soda, dissolved in hot water; lastly the flour.
There are no more delicious or wholesome muffins than these, if rightly mixed and quickly baked.
Belle’s Muffins.
- 3 pints of flour.
- 1 quart of milk.
- 2 eggs.
- 2 tablespoonfuls cream tartar.
- 1 tablespoonful soda.
- 1 tablespoonful salt.
Sift the cream tartar with the flour. Beat the eggs very light. Dissolve the soda in hot water. Bake in rings in a quick oven.
Corn Bread.
There is a marked difference between the corn-meal ground at the South, and that which is sent out from Northern mills. If any one doubts this, it is not she who has perseveringly tried both kinds, and demonstrated to her own conviction that the same treatment will not do for them. An intelligent lady once told me that the shape of the particles composing the meal was different—the one being round and smooth, the other angular. I am inclined to believe this. The Southern meal is certainly coarser, and the bread made from it less compact. Moreover, there is a partiality at the North for yellow meal, which the Southerners regard as only fit for chicken and cattle-feed. The yellow may be the sweeter, but I acknowledge that I have never succeeded in making really nice bread from it.
Indian meal should be purchased in small quantities, except for a very large family. It is apt to heat, mould, and grow musty, if kept long in bulk or in a warm place. If not sweet and dry, it is useless to expect good bread or cakes. As an article of diet, especially in the early warm days of spring, it is healthful and agreeable, often acting as a gentle corrective to bile and other disorders. In winter, also, it is always acceptable upon the breakfast or supper table, being warming and nutritious. In summer the free use of it is less judicious, on account of its laxative properties. As a kindly variation in the routine of fine white bread and baker’s rolls, it is worth the attention of every housewife. “John and the children” will like it, if it approximates the fair standard of excellence; and I take it, my good friend—you who have patiently kept company with me from our prefatory talk until now—that you love them well enough to care for their comfort and likings.
“My husband is wild about corn bread,” a wife remarked to me not a hundred years ago, “but I won’t make it for him; it is such a bother! And if I once indulge him, he will give me no peace.”
Beloved sister, I am persuaded better things of you. Good husbands cannot be spoiled by petting. Bad ones cannot be made worse—they may be made better. It seems a little thing, so trifling in its consequences, you need not tire further your aching back and feet to accomplish it—the preparation of John’s favorite dish when he does not expect the treat—to surprise him when he comes in cold and hungry, by setting before him a dish of hot milk-toast, or a loaf of corn bread, brown and crisp without, yellow and spongy within, instead of the stereotyped pile of cold slices, brown or white. If he were consulted, he would say, like the generous soul he is—“Don’t take one needless step for me, dear.” And he would mean it. But for all that, he will enjoy your little surprise—ay! and love you the better for it. It is the “little by little” that makes up the weal and woe of life.
May I make this digression longer yet, by telling you what I overheard a husband say to a wife the other day when he thought no one else was near enough to hear him. He is no gourmand, but he is very partial to a certain kind of cruller which nobody else can make, he thinks, so well as his little wife. It so chanced that in frying some of them, she scalded her hand badly. After it was bandaged, she brought up a plate of the cakes for luncheon. He looked at them, then at her, with a loving, mournful smile.
“I can understand now,” said he, “how David felt when his men-of-war brought him the water from the well of Bethlehem.”
Then he stooped and kissed the injured fingers. Yet he has been married twenty years. I was not ashamed that my eyes were moist. I honored him the more that his were dim.
This is my lesson by the wayside apropos to corn-bread.
And now again to business.
Receipts for Bread made of Northern Indian Meal.
Nonpareil Corn Bread. ✠
- 2 heaping cups of Indian meal.
- 1 cup of flour.
- 3 eggs.
- 2½ cups milk.
- 1 tablespoonful lard.
- 2 tablespoonfuls white sugar.
- 1 teaspoonful soda.
- 2 tablespoonfuls cream-tartar.
- 1 tablespoonful salt.
Beat the eggs very thoroughly—whites and yolks separately—melt the lard, sift the cream-tartar and soda into the meal and flour while yet dry, and stir this in at the last. Then, to borrow the direction scribbled by a rattle-tongued girl upon the above receipt, when she sent it to me—“beat like mad!” Bake quickly and steadily in a buttered mould. Half an hour will usually suffice. In cutting corn bread hold the knife perpendicularly and cut toward you.
Corn Meal Muffins.
Mix according to the foregoing receipt, only a little thinner, and bake in rings or small pattypans. All kinds of corn bread should be baked quickly and eaten while hot.
Risen Corn Bread.
- 1 pint Indian meal.
- 2 cups risen sponge, taken from your regular baking of wheat bread.
- ½ cup molasses, or, what is better, 4 tablespoonfuls white sugar.
- 1 teaspoonful soda, dissolved in hot water.
- 1 tablespoonful lard, melted.
- 1 cup flour, or enough for stiff batter.
Mix well, put to rise in a buttered mould until very light. Bake one hour. It is well to scald the meal and stir in while blood-warm.
Steamed Corn Bread. ✠
- 2 cups Indian meal.
- 1 cup flour.
- 2 tablespoonfuls white sugar.
- 2½ cups “loppered” milk, or buttermilk.
- 1 teaspoonful soda.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
- 1 heaping tablespoonful lard, melted.
Beat very hard and long, put in buttered mould, tie a coarse cloth tightly over it, and if you have no steamer, fit the mould in the top of a pot of boiling water, taking care it does not touch the surface of the liquid. Lay a close cover over the cloth tied about the mould, to keep in all the heat. Steam one hour and a half, and set in an oven ten minutes. Turn out upon a hot plate, and eat while warm.
This will do for a plain dessert, eaten with pudding-sauce.
Corn-Meal Crumpets.
- 1 quart Indian meal.
- 1 quart boiled milk.
- 4 tablespoonfuls yeast.
- 2 tablespoonfuls white sugar.
- 2 heaping tablespoonfuls lard, or butter, or half-and-half.
- 1 saltspoonful salt.
Scald the meal with the boiling milk, and let it stand until lukewarm. Then stir in the sugar, yeast, and salt, and leave it to rise five hours. Add the melted shortening, beat well, put in greased muffin-rings, set these near the fire for fifteen minutes, and bake. Half an hour in a quick oven ought to cook them.
Never cut open a muffin or crumpet of any kind, least of all one made of Indian meal. Pass the knife lightly around it to pierce the crust, then break open with the fingers.
Receipts for Corn Bread made of Southern Indian Meal.
Johnny Cake.
- 1 teacupful sweet milk.
- 1 teacupful buttermilk.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
- 1 teaspoonful soda.
- 1 tablespoonful melted butter.
Enough meal to enable you to roll it into a sheet half an inch thick. Spread upon a buttered tin, or in a shallow pan, and bake forty minutes. As soon as it begins to brown, baste it with a rag tied to a stick and dipped in melted butter. Repeat this five or six times until it is brown and crisp. Break—not cut it up—and eat for luncheon or tea, accompanied by sweet or buttermilk.
Aunt Jenny’s Johnny Cake.
Mix as above; knead well, and bake upon a perfectly clean and sweet board, before a hot fire, with something at the back to keep it up. Incline at such an angle as will prevent the cake from slipping off, until it is hardened slightly by baking, then place upright. Baste frequently with butter until nicely crisped.
Batter Bread, or “Egg Bread.” ✠
- Half a cup cold boiled rice.
- 2 eggs.
- 2 cups Indian meal.
- 1 tablespoonful lard or butter.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
- 1 pint milk.
Beat the eggs light, and the rice to a smooth batter in the milk. Melt the shortening. Stir all together very hard, and bake in shallow tins very quickly.
Risen Corn Bread.
Mix a tolerably stiff dough of corn-meal and boiling water, a little salt, and a tablespoonful butter. Let it stand four or five hours until light; make into small loaves and bake rather quickly.
Corn-meal Pone.
- 1 quart Indian meal.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
- A little lard, melted.
- Cold water to make a soft dough.
Mould with the hands into thin oblong cakes, lay in a well-greased pan, and bake very quickly.
The common way is to mould into oval mounds, higher in the middle than at the ends, shaping these rapidly and lightly with the hands, by tossing the dough over and over. This is done with great dexterity by the Virginia cooks, and this corn-meal pone forms a part of every dinner. It is broken, not cut, and eaten very hot.
Ash Cake
is mixed as above. A clean spot is swept upon the hot hearth, the bread put down and covered with hot wood ashes. It must be washed and wiped dry before it is eaten. A neater way is to lay a cabbage-leaf above and below the pone. The bread is thus steamed before it is baked, and is made ready for eating by stripping off the leaves.
Fried Pone.
Instead of moulding the dough with the hands, cut into slices with a knife. Try out some fat pork in a frying-pan, and fry the slices in the gravy thus obtained to a light-brown.
Griddle-Cakes, Waffles, etc.
If you have not used your griddle or waffle-iron for some time, wash it off hard with hot soap and water; wipe and rub well with dry salt. Heat it and grease with a bit of fat salt pork on a fork. It is a mistake, besides being slovenly and wasteful, to put on more grease than is absolutely necessary to prevent the cake from sticking. A piece of pork an inch square should last for several days. Put on a great spoonful of butter for each cake, and before filling the griddle test it with a single cake, to be sure that all is right with it as well as the batter.
The same rules apply to waffles. Always lay hot cakes and waffles upon a hot plate as soon as baked.
Buckwheat Cakes. ✠
- 1 quart buckwheat flour.
- 4 tablespoonfuls yeast.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
- 1 handful Indian meal.
- 2 tablespoonfuls molasses—not syrup.
Warm water enough to make a thin batter. Beat very well and set to rise in a warm place. If the batter is in the least sour in the morning, stir in a very little soda dissolved in hot water.
Mix in an earthen crock, and leave some in the bottom each morning—a cupful or so—to serve as sponge for the next night, instead of getting fresh yeast. In cold weather this plan can be successfully pursued for a week or ten days without setting a new supply. Of course you add the usual quantity of flour, &c., every night, and beat up well.
Do not make your cakes too small. Buckwheats should be of generous size. Some put two-thirds buckwheat, one-third oat-meal, omitting the Indian.
Flannel Cakes. ✠
- 1 quart milk.
- 3 tablespoonfuls yeast.
- 1 tablespoonful butter, melted.
- 2 eggs, well beaten.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
Flour to make a good batter. Set the rest of the ingredients as a sponge over night, and in the morning add the melted butter and eggs.
Corn-meal Flapjacks.
- 1 quart sour buttermilk.
- 2 eggs, beaten light.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
- 1 teaspoonful soda dissolved in hot water.
- 2 tablespoonfuls molasses.
- 1 tablespoonful lard, melted.
- ½ cup flour.
Meal to make a batter a trifle thicker than flannel cakes.
Graham Cakes. ✠
- 2 cups brown flour.
- 1 cup white flour.
- 3 cups sour or buttermilk.
- 1 full teaspoonful soda, dissolved in hot water.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
- 1 heaping tablespoonful lard.
- 3 eggs, beaten very light.
If you use sweet milk, add two teaspoonfuls cream-tartar. Bake as soon as they are mixed.