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Concluding Hints

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might.-Ancient Book. Things done by halves are never done right.--Modern Paraphrase. Considering how extensive is the domain of hotel cookery there is no likelihood that we shall ever recur to the items of bread and rolls again, and a few omissions in the foregoing matters must be made good here. The hardest thing to teach the tyro in mixing bread is to make the small quantity of dough soft enough in warm weather. Fortunately, with large masses the labor with stiff dough is so severe that few people err that way, but a little in active summer weather fermentation easily takes up too much flour and becomes rough and rotten, and all the instructions in the word will not help the "pastry" who does not know enough to temper the dough according to the weather. In winter when all the materials and tools are cold the stiffer the dough the better; in summer use less yeast and mix soft. So in mixing biscuit. I have, before now, when training down the rawness of a lot of picked-up summer resort help, placed all the ingredients for biscuits for the early breakfast of a party of tremendous trout fishers, in a pan, and then a baker who was a bread baker and nothing else has utterly spoiled them in the mixing, making them harder than crackers and not half as good. Biscuit should be mixed as soft as fritter batter, so that when the scrapings of the pan in flour and scraps of dough are added it can still be pressed out easily with the flat hands till worked smooth. Whenever your biscuit dough is so tough that the doubled fists must be used to press it out, conclude that you have made the common mistake, and have something yet to learn about mixing biscuit.

Mould out your dough for rolls in little round balls. Easier said than done. The beginner takes the pieces of dough in hand but they won't roll, but skate all over the table instead. You must brush away the flour, have the table so that the rolls will almost sick to it, very slightly dust your hands with flour, take two fresh, moist pieces and roll them under the hands with a slight pressure. The ball of the thumb draws the outside of the dough towards the palm and makes a smooth ball Of course you must mould two at once, using both hands, else you will never get ready for breakfast. Expert hands seldom stop to cut off the little pieces of dough; they can grab the right sized pieces for rolls from the lump with both hands, as quick as winking. You injure the dough by much moulding. The quicker you can get a smooth outside the better.

Brush your hot loaves from the oven with water, They are going to shrink as they cool, and if the crust will not give, the crumb will part inside and make broken slices.

The bakers have a saying that it don't matter how you mould up the loaves if you make the dough good. But that is only a comparative way of speaking, and they don't have to slice and toast their bread as we do, and see the rough ends and broken slices go to waste by the bushel. If the reader will turn back to our directions for moulding hotel loaves he will find a way that makes loaves as smooth and seamless as a watermelon, but it remains to say that moulding the loaves round first is done in either of two ways. If you are in practice with rolls you can mould small loaves with both hands, the same way. If not, do as the bakers do with "tin loaves" and Vienna bread. The shop bakers like to make loaves in tin moulds because they use for that soft dough carrying much water, and gaining for them several pounds in a barrel of flour. The bread so made is moist to cut and to keep and does not crumble. But as every loaf will expand in the oven and may open at the ends like the gaping shell of a dead oyster, it is the business of the moulder to form and fold the loaf so that it shall open and rise just where he wills it, and nowhere else. To mould "tin loaves:" Your dough being properly kneaded in layers leave it lying in a rather thin sheet. Cut that into the right sized squares for loaves. The expert workman makes them a little longer one way than the other. Take one of the pieces, press it out with the knuckles, double it, making a square. Catch the furthest corner with the extended fingers and pull it over, and under the wrists, which press it in the middle. Turn the piece of dough under the hands and reach another corner. Six motions makes a round, smooth loaf with a middle depression made by the wrists.

Now extend this depression lengthwise, forming a trough shape by pounding and lengthening the middle with the wrists while pulling over the rounding side with the fingers. Finally roll over the thick further side into the hollow middle, the other or near side forming the top lap to the rolled up loaf, and place it in the brick-shaped mould. Pre-s it down slightly in the mould to make square corners. This loaf will rise the way the bakers like to see-parted on one side, where the seam was left, and showing the whiteness of the inside without a break in the bread.

Our pic-nic loaves described near the beginning are called Stollen by the German bakers. This kind of sweetened bread is often made richer with additions of citron, etc. The bakers make up the loaves as just described, only doubling the two sides together instead of rolling, making a long split roll without any brushing with lard at all.

In addition to the names Kauglauff and Kugeloff applied to the varieties of yeast raised cakes, of which Stollen is one, Urbain-Dubois spells it Congloff, making three authorized ways, all meaning the same as Polish Baba, which is a general term for raised cakes, and French Savarin which, according to Dubois' menus serves to designate several varieties of cakes. These things are mentioned as helping to throw light on the mysteries of foreign menus, which "our own correspondents" in Europe delight to humiliate their Western cousins with.

Now about moulding French loaves. We have been unwilling to poach in the exclusive shop baker's grounds further than the thoroughness and usefulness aimed at in our book compelled, and will only add this: If you wish to try a more workman-like way than that previously set forth, commence as for "tin loaves," with wrists and fingers making the piece of dough into a round ball slightly depressed. Push these aside on a well floured part of the table till all are moulded. Make the trough-like depression across these with a rolling pin instead of the wrists, using plenty of flour, and depressing all before folding any. As no lard is used and bakers do not cut the loaves, the flour and the incidental drying of the dough while waiting, helps the desired parting open of the seam when baking. Having practised thus far you can double the loaves like split rolls--without any greasing--and experiment further at your pleasure.

In a large western city the writer knew a baker who sold little French loaves (petits-pains) in quantities that can best be described as cart loads, and he made them almost as just above described. Taking the four corners of the little flat pieces of dough, he pressed them with the points of the fingers into the middle, and with a blow of the edge of the open hand made the roll ready for a little rolling pin depression, making it very long and narrow, then pinching up the two thick sides together, slightly lapping one upon the other, and without any touch of lard about them, he placed them in pans so that when raised and baked they opened out cleft rolls of very fine appearance and of flaky texture.