German Puffs
1 pound of light bread dough. 6 ounces of butter. 2 ounces of sugar. 1/2 cup of milk. 10 yolks of eggs. 1 1/4 pounds of flour. Little salt. These can only be made the soft, light yellow puff-balls they ought to be, by a strict and thorough method of working the ingredients together. Take the dough 6 hours before the meal and mix in the butter, sugar, milk and salt. Set in a warm place awhile, then thoroughly beat together. Add two yolks at a time and flour by littles alternately, beating against the side of the pan. Then turn out the dough and knead it on the table. Set away to rise about 3 hours. Knead the dough twice more, as directed for rolls, but more thoroughly, till air will snap from the edges when pinched. Mould out in little balls. Brush these over with melted lard to prevent hardening outside. Rise half an hour or more on greased pans. Fry in sweet lard. May be sugared over or served with sauce, or as doughnuts, cold. They soak grease if raised too much. "Little Pittsburgh" Doughnuts.
These are doughnuts with a little history attached--but let us make them first. 4 pounds of light bread dough. 8 ounces of sugar and syrup mixed. 2 eggs. 2 or 3 ounces of lard, melted. Powdered sugar to dredge over. Lard to fry. Take the dough from the breakfast rolls, say at 9 in the morning, in Winter. In Summer the dough worked up at mid-day will do. Mix in the ingredients, let stand half an hour. Work up stiff with flour sufficient, and set to rise about 4 hours. Then knead, and roll it out to a sheet. Brush over the whole sheet of dough with very little melted lard. Cut out with a two-pound tomato can, and cut out the middle of each with a little empty two ounce ground cinnamon can. This makes rings, which must be set to rise on greased pans about 1/2 hour, then dropped in hot lard. Sift sugar over when done. They cook in about 5 minutes.
When Leadville first began grinding in crowds of mining men poor, and grinding them out rich, the poor men as they went in were often hard put to it for something to eat, and they never laughed at a doughnut, but treated it with respect. As saloons, boarding houses, clothing stores, stables, theatres, and even saw-mills and wood yards hastened to call themselves the "Little Pittsburgh," for the very famous mine which was at first the life of the camp, the bakers did likewise, and the makers of the preceding excellent doughnuts finding them a sort of bonanza as yet undeveloped, hastened to call them Little Pittsburghs, too. Purs?ing this vein they went on and advertised extensively. You could get a Little Pittsburgh doughnut for ten cents at any hour of the day or night, and a glass of dried-apple cider for the same price; but in a commutation arrangement you could get a doughnut and a glass of the cider together for fifteen cents. So Little Pittsburgh doughnuts became a part, and indeed, a leading feature of the camp. They were in two-line local notices scattered all through the papers, so that nobody could miss them. It seemed, in fact, as if all the news was gathered for the express purpose of drawing attention to doughnuts. One day it would be: "Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars has been offered and refused for the Chrysolite mine." And as a sequel: "There's nothing in camp can equal those Little Pittsburgh doughnuts." Or, perhaps: "Our esteemed fellow citizen fell down a shaft 500 feet deep, last evening. He struck on his head and probably never knew what hurt him." "O! those Little Pittsburgh doughnuts are so very fine, if you try them once you'll buy them every time, at the Union Bakery."
So, although the doughnuts were always the same, there was always something fresh and pleasant to give them a new zest. Sometimes it would be only a hanging, or a midnight garroting, but the chorus of doughnuts kept right on at the end of every performance, great or small. As a consequence these doughnuts had a great run. It is hard to fathom motives. Perhaps some people ate them for spice, trying to abolish them and their "damnable iteration," but of course that was useless, there were plenty more where these came from. They were placed in a tentative way on the best hotel tables, and they took--or at least the people took and partook. Evidently these Little Pittsburghs were popular with all.
But the halcyon days of ten-cent doughnuts were short and few, for soon competition came and began cutting them out with three-pound tomato cans instead of two-pound, making them so much larger. Not satisfied with that, other competitors left out the eggs and half the sugar and sold at five cents. There was no margin to pay for advertising in that. Little Pittsburgh doughnuts weakened and come down and the advertising c?ased. None may know what subtle connection there may be in the cases, but both the Leadville newspapers soon after died, and the Little Pittsburgh mine itself experienced a temporary collapse. I think it would have paid both the papers and the mining company to have gone on advertising the doughnuts at bed-rock prices, or even free, for when they left them out they left out the spice of the paper, and as the doughnuts had boosted Little Pittsburgh it would only have heen fair for Little Pittsburgh to boost-but it is useless moralizing. The next are the cheap, light-colored and large doughnuts that knocked the bottom out of the rich, brown Little Pittsburghs.