Bread: Sift
Sift salt with three cupfuls of flour, beat vigorously into liquid, and let sponge rise. Cream the lard, butter, and sugar; dredge the fruit with flour and add to the sponge. Add sufficient flour to make a soft dough.
Knead thoroughly and set to rise.
When light, divide, form into loaves, put in bread pans, and when ready, bake in slightly cooler oven than is required for plain bread. For the fruit in this bread, use either raisins, currants, citron, dates, figs, or prunelles.
Bread Made with Dry Yeast. 2 quarts flour, 2½ cupfuls warm water, 2 tablespoonfuls lard, 1 yeast cake, 1 tablespoonful sugar, 1 teaspoonful salt.
Sift the flour in the bread pan; break up the yeast cake and put in a quart bowl; then add a gill of water, and mash with a spoon until the yeast and water are well mixed. Beat in 1 gill of flour. Cover the bowl and set in a warm place for two hours.
At the end of that time the batter should be a perfect sponge. Add to the sponge a pint of warm water, half the lard, also salt and sugar.
Stir this mixture into the flour and mix with a spoon. Sprinkle the board with flour, turn out the dough, knead twenty minutes, using as little flour as possible. At the end of this time the ball of dough should be soft, smooth, and elastic. Place the dough in the bowl and rub the second spoonful of butter or lard over it.
Cover with a towel, then a tin cover.
Set the bowl in a warm place and let it raise over night. In the morning the dough will have increased to three times its original volume and be a perfect sponge. Knead it in the bowl for five minutes-do not use flour-then shape into three small loaves. Put these in deep pans, and with a sharp knife cut lengthwise through the center of each loaf. Put the pans in a warm place and cover with a towel. Let the loaves rise to twice their size, then bake fifty minutes. کے BREAD Sweet-Potato Bread. 1 cake yeast, cupful lukewarm water, 1 cupful scalded milk, 1 tablespoonful salt, cupful sugar, 1 cupful sweet mashed potatoes, 3 tablespoonfuls melted butter.
Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm water, add the milk, salt, sugar , and potatoes (roasted, scraped from the skins, and worked to a cream with the melted butter), then allow to cool. Beat all together until light, then stir in with a wooden spoon enough flour to make a soft dough.
Throw a cloth over the bread bowl and set in a warm place until well raised. Make into small loaves; let them rise for an hour and bake in a brisk oven.
Salt-Rising Bread. 2 cupfuls hot water, 1½ teaspoonfuls salt, 1 pint lukewarm milk, Flour.
Dissolve teaspoonful salt in hot water, and beat in gradually enough flour to make a very soft dough.