Breads made with little or no wheat to be successful must be treated in a different way from white flour breads. If there is cooked cereal in the dough it must be made much stiffer than for ordinary bread. All dark breads must be well risen in the dough, but must not rise to double their bulk after putting in the pans; only to half double. The oven should not be as hot as for white bread; it should be at a temperature so that a small loaf will not be overdone in an hour and a quarter.
When possible use milk, or at least part milk, for the liquid in making the sponge; the dough will use less flour and require less kneading and the bread will have greater food value. The milk must be scalded and cooled or it may sour as the dough rises. If corn meal is to be scalded with the milk, it is better to stir the meal into the milk when it is in the saucepan on the stove rather than to pour the hot milk over the meal.
Don’t make the mistake of having the dark loaf sweet. One tires very soon of a sweet bread as the staff of life.
In using recipes for these new breads it is necessary to remember that at the present time there is no standard for these meals and flours that we are using. There are many good kinds on the market that differ in the amount of liquid that they will take up.
In none of the recipes calling for whole wheat flour do I refer to flour with bran in it. Whole wheat, rye, oat, barley, and rice flour should be fine enough to go through a fine flour sieve; otherwise they should be called meals.
Corn flour and the very fine bolted meal are as fine as the whole wheat flour and cannot be used for the recipes calling for corn meal. The coarser bolted meal can be treated as the fine granulated meal.
In making yeast bread always have the liquid lukewarm, and in cold weather it facilitates matters to warm the flour.
Never let sponge or dough get chilled until it has risen once; after that it can be put in the ice box to check fermentation till it is needed to make into rolls or coffee bread.
Thick stoneware is the best material for a mixing-bowl for yeast bread, but it is heavy to handle. If the sponge or dough is set to rise in a tin dish it should be well wrapped in a thick cloth to keep the dough at an even temperature. Both sponge and dough will stand a good deal of hard treatment, but the bread-making will be slow and the result poor.
A bread-mixer is a great labor-saver, but there should be a thick cloth cover to be used with it.
The rising of dough may be hastened by setting the dish in a pan of warm water and adding more from time to time to keep up the temperature.