Home › Bread › Bread, Grissini, Porridge and Rolls
Bread, Grissini, Porridge and Rolls
Bagshot Daily Loaf. (Mrs. Sherwood. 1860.) Take, to make this bread, rather less than 4 lbs. of well dried and sifted flour. Put it into a pan and make a hole in it, into which pour ³¼ oz. of German yeast first dissolved in ½ pt. of warm water and then strained, or else 3 tablespoonfuls brewer's yeast, or 1½ pt. home-made yeast (see Baking Powder, Yeast, &c.). Over this put a pinch of salt and give one good stir round. Then cover the pan with a cloth and let the sponge rise in the screen from 1 hour to 12 hours, or less - it depends on the strength of the yeast. Take it up when you see it is ready and knead all together into a thinnish paste, to make which add sufficient water (at blood heat).
Put the dough again to rise, but this time uncovered, in the tin in which it is to be baked. It should half fill the tin and rise to the top before going into a moderate oven to bake.
The warm water should make it honeycomb. The less yeast the bread will rise with, the better it will be.
For brown bread, knead it more than for white or it will be sticky. Birk Hall Bread, made with Ginger Yeast.
Put 4 lbs. of flour in a pan. Make a hole in the middle and put in about 1½ pt. of Ginger Yeast (see Baking Powder, &c.), a little salt, and as much water, as warm as new milk, as will make it into a still dough, i.e., probably about a quart of water. Let it remain in the pan 2 hours to rise before the fire, then knead it again and put it into the tin in which it is to be baked. It should, when first put in, about half fill the tin. Put it again before the fire to rise till it reaches the top of the tin; then bake. Use a large tin - and the bread must honeycomb. It should have "eaves" of bread hanging over the sides of the tin when done.* Bread from Balmoral Yeast.
For this mix a little of the Balmoral Yeast (see Baking Powder, &c.), with warm water, and strain off the hops. Set the sponge and finish making the bread in the usual way. Bread on the Oven Bottom. (This refers to old-fashioned brick ovens, which make much better bread.) The same quantity of flour and yeast as Birk Hall bread, but make the dough much stiffer, by using less water. It must rise 2 hours in the pan, and then be kneaded again and put straight into the oven, which for all bread - making should be of moderate heat. * Many cooks now consider such "eaves" a sign of "overproving." Brown Bread. (Lemann - a celebrated biscuit maker.) Method of preparing meal: Equal portions of Dantzig and Bedfordshire or Devonshire white wheat having been carefully separated from the imperfect grains, sand or other foreign matter, are passed through a screening machine, and the wheat, now thoroughly cleansed, is let into the hopper, through which it is slowly passed to the millstones and ground, great care being taken to prevent the millstones running either too quickly or too close upon one another.
The meal should be allowed to cool thoroughly before being sacked, and will be the better for standing from 3 weeks to a month before dressing. The dressing is effected by passing the meal through a dressing machine, fine in proportion to the quality of the flour required. In the present case, the coarsest bran only should be removed.
To make a bushel, or 56 lbs., of the above meal into bread: Take 1½ gallons of tepid water, 2 pts. of good brewer's yeast, and mix them intimately with about half of the flour, until the mass is perfectly uniform throughout, and quite free from lumps. This is called "sponge." A little flour being sprinkled over the surface, the whole should be closely covered and left.
In about 1 or 1½ hours according to the temperature of the weather the sponge will have full "proof," and when from 5 to 6 qts. of tepid water in which 3/4 lb. salt has been dissolved, have been thrown into the sponge and thoroughly incorporated with it, the remaining portion of the flour may be added, and the whole made up into a uniform paste or dough.
When the dough is made it should be covered over with a flannel, and in about an hour more it will have swelled and become sufficiently spongy to be divided into loaves, which may then be immediately put into the oven; or, if a very light porous loaf is required, the dough should be allowed to remain covered with a flannel in its tin another half hour, before being placed in the oven.
Brown Loaf. (Mrs. Brandreth.) 1½ lb. coarse oatmeal; ½ lb. brown flour; ½ lb. common white flour; a little salt; a heaped teaspoonful Yeatman's yeast powder or German yeast. Mix all with water. Bake. Corfu Buttermilk Bread. (Mrs. Ellacombe.) This can be made when no yeast is to be got, but requires a very light hand. The proportions are: A small 1½ teaspoonful bicarbonate of soda, or a whole teaspoonful of common bread soda, mixed with 1 lb. flour and as much buttermilk as will make it a proper consistency for baking. The soda must be well bruised and thoroughly mixed into the buttermilk, and then stirred quickly into the flour. Shape into buns twice the size of an egg, then put at once into a quick oven and bake a light brown. This recipe also answers well for making small loaves. Buttermilk scones, made up size and thickness of a crumpet, are the same mixture baked on a girdle. Being floured outside they look like untoasted muffins. "Excellent" Bread.
This recipe makes a little yeast go far. 34 lb. of well-boiled mealy potatoes, mashed through a coarse sieve or fine colander, 2 tablespoonfuls of yeast, or you may use ³¼ oz. of dried German yeast, 13% pts. lukewarm water (88° Fahrenheit). Add ³¼ lb. of flour, to render the mixture the consistency of thin batter.
The mixture should be set aside to ferment; if placed in a warm situation it will rise in less than 2 hours, when it will resemble yeast in appearance except as to colour. The sponge so made is then to be mixed with a pint of water nearly blood warm, viz., 92º Fahrenheit, and poured into half a pack of flour, which has previously had 14 oz. of salt mixed into it; the whole should then be kneaded into dough, and allowed to rise 2 hours in a warm place, then kneaded into loaves and baked. Potatoes, by increasing the fermentation in the sponge, make the bread lighter. Quantity given is for half-peck loaf baked on oven bottom. In bad seasons lime water must be used instead of plain water in making the bread. (See Notes on Bread Baking.) Glenkindie Bread. (Miss Leith. 1877.) For this, to each lb. of flour add teaspoonful of Yeatman's dried yeast powder, and as much new milk as will make it into a stiff dough. Add a little salt, and bake in a quick oven.
Invercauld Soda Bread. 7 lbs. of flour, 2 oz. carbonate of soda, 1 oz. tartaric acid, 8 ozs. of butter. As no barm is required for soda bread, it can be made at any time without inconvenience. Lady Clark's Bread.
Put a pint of Home-made yeast (see Baking Powder, &c.), or 1½ pts. brewer's yeast, to a stone of flour overnight. Let it rise in the kitchen near the fire; take it up in the morning, and knead well, then make dough into loaves, letting them rise before the fire and putting them, when they have risen, in the oven to bake. Mrs. Thomas's Bread.
For rolls and a tin loaf.
Take in a large kitchen basin about 4 lbs. flour, and make a hole in the centre; boil some potatoes and mash them well without milk, butter or salt, and pass them through a sieve.
Take in another basin ¼ lb. of these mashed potatoes, and mix well in about 1½ pt. warm water. Now put a teaspoonful of salt into the hole in the 4 lbs. of flour, and pour over it the potatoes and water; add 6 tablespoonfuls of Ginger yeast (see Baking Powder, &c.), and give the mixture one good stir round, but do not stir the flour sides in. Cover the basin with a plate, and leave in a cool corner of the kitchen. If this is done at 4 p.m., the mixture should rise in a strong froth by 9 or 10 p.m. at latest, or sooner if the room or the weather is very warm. Do not stir it in till then. It must now be kneaded with about 1½ lb. more flour and 1½ pt. more warm water. Leave it all night in the kitchen, or, if that is too hot, in the pantry, covered by a cloth. Next morning, the half of the sponge necessary to make a tin loaf will want little more kneading or flour and no more water before putting it into the tin, which it must not more than half fill. This tin bread must rise before the fire till over the top of the pan, when it is ready for the oven.
The other half of the dough, for rolls, must have some butter and milk added to make it less stiff, about 1 oz. butter to 2 spoonfuls milk melted together, or water in hot weather when milk would turn sour. Knead them as little as possible; shape and place on a baking sheet, and cover with a cloth to rise 20 minutes before the fire, then bake a nice brown and serve on a napkin.
Notes on Bread Baking. (Sir James Clark.) Bakers put alum in bread to make it carry water, feel soft, and appear white. Alum does this by coagulating the gluten. The combination is deleterious. Liebig saturates lime with water, and uses this water in making bread. The lime equally coagulates the gluten, makes the bread equally white, removes all acid, and supplies the lime which wheat and rye want. Use a proportion of 5 lbs. of lime-saturated water to 19 lbs. of flour.
Tin Loaves. (Emslie, Tillypronie. 1893.) Large tins bread made with spirit yeast - from "The Cameron Bridge Distillery Co.," Windygates, in Fife (by post).
To make the yeast work add some flour, 2 ozs. of yeast to 2 tablespoonfuls of flour, then add 2 dessertspoonfuls of powdered white sugar and 1½ pts. of lukewarm water poured over all. Stir well with a wooden spoon, and put in a cook's basin in the meat-screen to work, covered with a cloth and left one hour. Then take 3 lbs. of flour, and a pinch of salt. Make a hole in middle and strain in the yeast; work all well together to a dough, adding more lukewarm water if necessary; cover with a cloth and again let it rise in the meat-screen till it comes to top of basin in 1 or 1½ hours. Then beat up well again and half fill the buttered tins. The dough to rise to rim of tin; then bake. When taken out of tins lay the loaves on their sides till cold. If wanted light do not cut till next day.
Grissini. No. 1.