take from fifteen to twenty minutes. Then let the bread raise in a warm place; the yeast plant can live in a temperature ranging from 30° to 170° F., but thrives best at about 72°. Cover with a cloth, and in winter keep by a warm stove. If made with compressed yeast, the dough will raise the first time in an hour. Take it at its first lightness before it begins to sink back (it should be like a honeycomb all through, and double or treble its original bulk), put it on your molding-board, or one half of it at a time, and mold it well until it is fine and tender again. Add no flour this time, but keep the hands moist with warm water or milk or with lard. Divide into loaves, small ones, which should only half fill the greased tins, and set again to raise, keeping it at the same temperature and letting it get very light again. Flour that is rich in gluten needs longer to raise than that containing more starch.

Baking bread.

It is difficult to give directions about the heat of the oven. One housekeeper says "hot enough so that you can keep your hand in till you count twelve," another, "until you can count thirty," and the puzzled novice can only inquire "how fast do you count?" The oven must be hot enough to brown the bread lightly in ten minutes, and to bake a small loaf in from twenty minutes to half an hour.

Additional facts.

If more convenient, a bread sponge may be made at first with the water, yeast, and part of the flour. and when light the rest of the flour added. It hastens the a little.

process

Do not let the bread raise more than twice; it loses How many times shall bread rise ?each time some of its nutritive qualities. Bread raised once is coarse of grain but sweet to the taste.

To keep bread long.

Dough that has become chilled.

Mold it harder than you do bread that is to be

eaten soon.

Set the bread pan immediately into a larger one filled with warm water, and as the water cools replace with warm until the dough begins to raise again.

Dough raised dur

This method is often convenient, and does very ing the night. well if slower yeast is used, but bread is better to be raised quickly with compressed yeast. If the latter is used, a forenoon is sufficient for the making and baking.

For convenience, as to make warm biscuits for To delay the baking of bread supper, a rising dough may be kept at a standstill for dough. hours without injury at a temperature of about 50°, as in a cellar, and an hour before baking brought into a warm room to finish the raising process.

Graham bread.

BREADS FROM OTHER FLOURS.

Graham bread is made like white bread, using two parts graham to one of white flour, or any other proportion liked, but it should be mixed very soft. A little sugar

and fat should be added, one tablespoonful lard or beef fat, and two tablespoonfuls sugar or molasses. Bake slower and longer

than white bread.

The usual and most convenient way of making graham bread is to mix the flour and other ingredients with some of the white sponge on baking day.

Rye bread.

It is

Rye bread is made exactly as is bread from wheat flour, but in this country four parts rye, one part corn meal, and a handful of wheat flour are generally used. It must bake much longer, two to three hours in a slow oven. still better steamed the first two hours and baked the third. Corn bread is made of three parts corn meal to one of wheat flour, same quantity of yeast and salt as for white bread, and an addition of two tablespoonfuls lard or beef fat and two tablespoonfuls sugar. It is only to be stirred, not molded, and need raise but once.

Corn bread.

Breakfast rolls or biscuits.

BISCUITS, BUNS, ETC.

These are little breads" of either white or graham flour. Make part of the dough out into little balls which will raise more quickly and bake in a shorter time, a little butter or lard, one tablespoonful to a quart of dough, being generally molded with it.

When called "breakfast rolls," the dough is made out into flat, round cakes, the top buttered and folded over not quite in the middle.

Milk rolls.

delicate.

Milk rolls are made from bread dough mixed with milk instead of water; they are very tender and

Wheat gems or

One modification in the baking of dough is worthy drop biscuits. of mention. Use about a cup more milk in mixing the recipe for bread given above, so that the dough will just drop from a spoon and then bake in forms in the oven, or on a slow griddle.

Rusks.

These are made from bread dough mixed with milk and with the addition of four eggs and one

cup of butter to a quart of milk. Form, long and high.

Other uses for

There are many uses for the above dough. When rusk dough. made out into biscuit shape it may be steamed and eaten as a simple pudding with fruit, or made into tiny balls and cooked, when light, in a meat stew, the dish being then called a pot-pie.

Buns, plain.

These are like rusks (above) plus two cups of sugar and a little spice, say one half teaspoonful nutmeg. Roll the dough out half an inch thick, and cut with a biscuit cutter. Let it raise till very light, which will take some time on account of the sugar.

Fruit buns.

Raised cake.

To plain buns add one cup India currants, washed, dried, and floured, or raisins cut in bits. From the recipe for buns, as above, a plain and good cake may be made by using one pint instead of one quart of milk to the given quantity of eggs, butter, and sugar, and adding a little more fruit. Bake in a ribbed pudding dish which has been thickly buttered, and in the butter blanched almonds arranged in rows.

Doughnuts.

For a fine brown crust.

Bun dough may also be fried in fat, as doughnuts. To give a fine crust to biscuit or buns: Brush over before baking with a feather dipped in one of these mixtures: one teaspoonful of molasses and milk, two teaspoonfuls of sugar and milk, or three teaspoonfuls sugar and the white of an egg.

To show the true relation of the above doughs to each other, the quantity has been kept the same as for bread dough, but one half the given quantity of cake, buns, or biscuit would be enough for a large family.

To steam bread.

Any of the above doughs can be cooked by steaming instead of baking, when more convenient. They will of course lack the brown crust, but may afterwards be dried

or browned in the oven. A somewhat longer time is required for steaming than for baking.

and corn.

The materials for these are, one quart milk, or Raised pancakes, wheat, grahammilk and water, a little more than a quart of flour, one tablespoonful compressed yeast or one half cup liquid yeast, one teaspoonful salt, one tablespoonful butter; the flour may be wheat flour, wheat and graham mixed, or wheat and corn mixed, or part bread crumbs may be mixed with the flour. Make and raise like bread sponge. It is better they should be too thick than too thin, as milk may be added to thin them after they are light, but raw flour added at that time spoils them.

Pancakes with eggs.

Add to the above batter, just before baking, one, two, or three eggs, yolks and whites beaten separately. Use in this case somewhat less flour.

Muffins and waffles.

These can be made of either of the above pancake batters, with one cup to one pint more flour.

BUCKWHEAT FLOUR.

Buckwheat flour makes bread that is relished by those accustomed to its somewhat peculiar taste, but in this country it is used only in pancakes.

Buckwheat pan

One quart buckwheat flour, one teaspoonful salt, cakes. one cup or less of corn meal scalded in a little water, two teaspoonfuls molasses (to make them brown — a little buttermilk answers the same purpose), one tablespoonful compressed yeast, one quart warm water or enough to make a thin batter. Let raise over night.

Soda.

FLOUR RAISED WITH SODA.

On the interaction of bicarbonate of soda and different acids, by which carbonic acid gas is liberated, is based a common method of raising doughs. It wastes none of the flour as does yeast, but it has its own disadvantages. The product of these chemicals acting on each other is a salt which is left in the bread; hydrochloric acid acted on by soda gives common salt, to which there could be no objection, but this method is not easily used in the household, and the salt left by

other acids, as the lactic acid of milk when acted on by bicarbonate of soda, we get enough of in other dishes. Whether reliable experiments have been made as to the comparative digestibility of breads raised with soda and those raised with yeast the writer does not know, but there is a wide-spread impression that the former should be eaten only occasionally, and it is certain that we tire of them sooner than of yeast breads. Besides, which is of importance to one who must economize in milk, eggs, etc., better materials must be used with soda than with yeast to produce an equally rich tasting bread or cake.

METHODS.

We have three methods of using bicarbonate of soda to raise flour: by its action on

I. The acid contained in sour milk, from one to two teaspoonfuls of soda being used to a quart of milk.

2. On cream of tartar, the proportions being one teaspoonful soda to two of cream of tartar to a quart of flour.

3. On tartaric or other acids already mixed with it in a baking powder and to be used according to directions on the package, or, one may say in general that three teaspoonfuls of the powder go to every quart of flour.

The secret of success in making soda raised breads

Secret of success. consists in (1) the perfect mixing of the soda and

cream of tartar or the baking powder, with the flour, cooks who are particular sieving the ingredients five times. In this connection we cannot urge too strongly that each housewife should make and keep on hand this prepared flour; in a leisure time she can measure, sieve, and mix it, and she has then in making biscuit or cake, only to chop in the butter, add the milk and eggs and it is done.

2. In light mixing of the shortening with the flour; this is best accomplished with a chopping knife.

3. In a rapid completion of the work after the two raising agencies have become wet and begun to work, and no delay in baking when all is ready.

Ingredients: One quart of flour, one teaspoonful Soda biscuits. of salt, one tablespoonful of butter, or butter and lard, or butter and suet, one scant pint of sweet milk or water,

with