Part 5

Mix together two tablespoonfuls of Indian meal and the same quantity of flour, wet them with cold water, and stir into a cup of boiling water. Cook in a double boiler for half an hour, stirring often. Add salt, and beat in slowly a pint of scalding milk, cook, stirring constantly for fifteen minutes longer. Serve with cream.

Brewis (as made by our grandmothers)

Dry bread in the oven and crush with the rolling-pin into crumbs. Heat two cups of slightly salted milk, and when it boils, stir in a cupful of the dried crumbs. Add a tablespoonful of butter, and cook, beating steadily for five minutes. Serve hot with cream, or an abundance of sweet milk.

Rice

Wash a cupful of rice in two waters, then drop it slowly into two quarts of salted boiling water. The water should be at a galloping boil. Do not stir the rice once during the twenty minutes in which it must cook steadily. At the end of that time test a grain to see if it is tender, and if it is, turn the rice into a colander; shake this hard that the air may reach all the kernels, and set in the open oven five minutes before dishing. Each grain should stand separate from the rest.

This is the South Carolinian way of cooking rice, and the one and only right way.

Indian meal mush

Moisten a cupful of corn-meal with enough cold water to make it into a paste. Stir this paste into a quart of salted, boiling water, and cook, beating it hard and often, for an hour at least. If the mush becomes too stiff, add from time to time more boiling water.

Farina

A good, inexpensive cereal, which seldom appears upon the breakfast table. Yet it should have honorable mention.

Soak overnight. In the morning, stir it into boiling water, slightly salted, and cook half an hour, stirring up well from the bottom.

Each patented breakfast cereal has its champion. It would be invidious to name any of them here. Nearly all are founded upon wheat, corn, rye, barley or rice. Each is accompanied by full directions for the preparations of the same for the table.

Oatmeal, rice, mush, farina—any of the cereals that must be cooked before they are eaten—are delicious and nutritious when committed to the “hay-store” of which we are hearing so much.

The soaked cereal is cooked for five minutes after the boil begins, and the bubbling pot, closely covered, is set immediately in a nest made by hollowing out the hay with which a box is packed. The hay is pressed closely all around the pot, an old quilt is spread over all and the whole left untouched for five, six or ten hours. The cereal will be hot when served, and tender beyond compare.

BREAKFAST BREADS

Beginning with the most important and difficult form of bread-making, I offer three methods of preparing and baking the wholesome home-made loaf, fondly recollected by those whose early lives were spent in regions where bakers’ sawdusty cubes and parallelograms were not delivered at the back door in lieu of the genuine staff of life.

Potato sponge bread (No. 1)

Boil and mash, while hot, four potatoes of fair size, beating into them a tablespoonful, each, of cottolene or other fat and of white sugar. Beat smooth, adding, gradually, one and one-half pints of lukewarm water. Strain through a colander upon a pint of sifted flour. When you have a lumpless batter, add half a cake of compressed yeast, dissolved in four tablespoonfuls of warm water.

This is your sponge. Set in a moderately warm place in a bread-bowl with a perforated cover. If you have not this cover, throw a double fold of mosquito net or cheese-cloth over the bowl.

In four hours in summer, and six in winter, the sponge should be light and the top broken by air bubbles. Have ready in another deep bowl or tray five pints of dried flour of the best quality, sifted with a tablespoonful of salt. Hollow a space in the middle and work the sponge gradually into the flour with a clean, cool, bare hand, well floured to hinder the dough from sticking to it.

The dough should be just stiff enough to handle. When you can lift it to the kneading-board without spilling, it is ready. Rinse the bowl out with a little warm water and work into the dough in order to get all the sponge. Flour the board and knead the ball of dough, always working from the outside of the ball toward the middle. After ten minutes’ hard work, turning the dough over and over and around and around, the dough should be so elastic that if you deal it a smart blow with your fist the indentation will fill up again instantly.

Return to the mixing bowl, cover and leave as before, out of drafts in a steady temperature. When it has risen to double the original bulk—in four or six hours—return to the board and knead again, quickly and vigorously, for eight or ten minutes. Make into loaves and set to rise in pans, filling each half-full. Cover with a cloth, let all rise for an hour, or until the pans are two-thirds full, and bake.

Have a steady fire, with coal enough to last until the baking is over. See that the ovens are “just right” by holding your naked arm in one. If you can hold it there comfortably for one whole minute and not more, you may put in the bread. Or try the oven with a little flour put upon a tin plate and set well back in the closed oven. It should be delicately touched with brown in five minutes if the oven be right.

In ten minutes open the oven door very cautiously, and if you see the pans filled to the top, cover with light-brown “grocer’s paper” to prevent the crust from hardening before the heart of the loaf is done. Ten minutes before the hour for baking is up remove the papers and let the top crust brown.

Turn out the loaves carefully upon a cloth, propping them against a pan or other clean object, that they may not get sodden in cooling. Do not put into the bread-box until they are entirely cold. The box should have a cloth in the bottom, and another thrown over the bread before the box is closed.

Bread with plain sponge (No. 2)

Chop a tablespoonful of cottolene or other fat, or butter, into a quart of flour; wet with a quart of warm water; add a tablespoonful of sugar, and half a yeast-cake dissolved in warm water. Beat all together _hard_ for ten minutes, as you would cake batter. Cover, and set aside to rise as with potato sponge. In the morning work into two quarts of salted flour and proceed as directed in last recipe.

Milk bread (No. 1)

Sift two quarts of flour with a tablespoonful of sugar and an even teaspoonful of salt. Have ready a pint of boiling water into which you have stirred an even tablespoonful of butter. Add, while the water is boiling, two cups of milk, and take from the fire at once. When a little more than blood-warm, stir into the milk-and-water half a cake of compressed yeast, dissolved in half a cupful of warm water. Make a hole in the sifted flour, pour in the mixture and work quickly with a wooden spoon to a soft dough. Flour your hands, make the dough into a manageable ball and knead hard and steadily for ten minutes. Let the dough rise to double the original bulk in your covered bread-bowl, make into loaves when you have kneaded it for five minutes, and proceed as already directed.

Milk bread (No. 2)

Sift two quarts of flour into a large bowl and stir into it a teaspoonful, each, of salt and sugar. Into this flour stir a pint of warm milk, to which has been added a scant tablespoonful of melted butter, a pint of warm water, and half a yeast cake dissolved in a gill of blood-warm water. Work to a dough; turn upon a floured pastry-board and knead for fifteen minutes. Put the dough in the bread-raiser and set to rise over night. Early in the morning divide into loaves, knead each for five minutes, put the loaves into greased pans and set in a warm place to rise for an hour before baking in a steady oven. Cover the bread for the first half-hour it is in the oven. It should be baked in an hour.

Whole wheat bread (No. 1)

Dissolve a cake of yeast in half a cupful of warm water. Pour two cups of boiling water upon two cups of milk, and stir into them a teaspoonful, each, of salt and sugar. When they are about blood-warm add the yeast. Into this stir a quart of whole wheat flour. Of course, flour varies in its thickening powers, but there should be enough to make a good batter. Beat hard for five minutes, then stir in more flour until you have a dough that is as soft as it can be handled. Knead for ten minutes on a floured board and set to rise for three hours. Knead again for five minutes; make into loaves and let these rise. When light, bake. If the loaves are small they will bake in three-quarters of an hour.

Whole wheat bread (No. 2)

One tablespoonful of cottolene or other fat and the same of sugar. One cup, each, of boiling water and of hot (not boiling) milk. One yeast-cake dissolved in half a cup of warm water. One cup of white flour and three cups of whole wheat flour, or enough to make a soft dough. Knead for ten minutes; cover and let it rise until it is twice its original bulk. Make into small loaves; let it rise for an hour, or until very puffy, and bake.

Graham bread (No. 1)

Set a sponge over night, as for white bread, and in the morning work into it a cup of salted whole wheat flour, three cups of graham flour and three tablespoonfuls of molasses. Knead long and hard, and set to rise. When very light make into loaves and set in a warm place for an hour longer. Bake in an even oven. The loaves should be covered with thick wrapping-paper during the first half-hour they are in the oven, then allowed to brown. This bread is especially nice when made with a potato sponge, keeping fresh and sweet much longer than when the plain sponge is used.

Graham bread (No. 2)

Make a sponge as for white bread, over night, and in the morning add to it three scant tablespoonfuls of molasses and enough graham flour to make a soft dough. Knead thoroughly, and after forming into loaves and putting these into well-greased pans, set them to rise. When risen, bake in a tolerably hot oven.

Old-fashioned rye bread

Dissolve half a cake of yeast in a quarter-cup of lukewarm milk, with a small teaspoonful of white sugar. Pour this into a wooden bowl, add a pint of lukewarm water, a heaping teaspoonful, each, of salt and caraway seed, and a pint of rye flour. Stir well with a wooden spoon and set to rise in a warm place for two hours. When sufficiently risen it will be full of bubbles. Add then flour enough to make a very stiff dough. Beat this for at least ten minutes and set to rise for two hours more. Knead on a floured board, let it rise in the pan again until it begins to crack. Dip your hand in cold water, wet the loaf and put it into the oven. It must bake one hour. Do not open the door for ten minutes after it goes in. The oven should be very hot at first, and as soon as the bread is browned it should be covered with stout paper.

If you like, you may omit the caraway seeds. Some people dislike them exceedingly. Others would not relish rye bread “all of ye olden time” without them.

Rye and Indian bread

Make a soft sponge of potatoes, or a plain sponge. (See Bread No. 2.) When light, sift together two cupfuls of rye flour with one of Indian meal, a teaspoonful of salt, an even teaspoonful of soda. Make a hole in the middle, pour in the sponge, and when the ingredients are thoroughly incorporated beat in half a cupful of molasses. Should the molasses thin the dough into a batter, add rye flour. Knead until it is as light as a rubber ball, set aside in a covered bread-bowl and let it rise six hours. Work ten minutes more, make into loaves, and when they are well up in the world bake in a slow oven. The loaves will require three hours to bake properly. Cover with paper for the first two hours.

The dear old grandaunt from whom I got this ancient and honorable recipe had baked her “rye and Indian” for fifty years in the brick oven of a homestead two hundred years old. She covered her loaves with leaves from an oak near the door. The oak overshadowed a well dug in 1640.

Steamed Boston brown bread

Mix thoroughly a cup, each, of graham flour, wheat flour and corn-meal, and stir in a teaspoonful of salt. Warm together a cup of milk, in which is dissolved a small teaspoonful of baking soda, and a teacupful of molasses. Pour over the mixed flours and meal a cupful of boiling water, and then add the warmed milk and molasses. Beat hard and long, and turn into a greased pudding-mold with a closely-fitting top. Cook in an outer vessel of boiling water for three hours. Remove from the water, take the cover from the mold and set in the oven for ten or fifteen minutes, or until the bread is dry about the edges. Turn out, wrap in a napkin, and send to the table.

“Salt-rising” bread (No. 1)

(An old Virginia recipe)

Dissolve a half-teaspoonful of salt in two cups of scalding water, and beat in gradually enough flour to make a very soft dough. Beat for ten minutes, cover and set in a very warm place for eight hours. Now stir a teaspoonful of salt into a pint of lukewarm milk and add enough flour to make a stiff batter before working it into the risen dough. Mix thoroughly, cover, and set again in a warm place to rise until very light. Turn into a wooden bowl and knead in enough flour to make the batter of the consistency of ordinary bread dough. Make into loaves and set these to rise, and, when light, bake.

“Salt-rising” bread (No. 2)

(Contributed)

Put a quart of warm water,—not scalding hot, but at blood-heat,—into a pitcher, deep and of narrow mouth. Beat into it one teaspoonful of sugar, one-half teaspoonful of salt, a lump of soda not larger than a pea and (not necessarily, but preferably) a tablespoonful of corn-meal, with enough flour to make a rather thick, but not really stiff, batter. Set your pitcher, well covered, into a stone jar or other deep vessel, and surround it with blood-warm water, setting it where such temperature will be quite evenly maintained. Never allow it to reach scalding heat. In two and a half hours, or, at the very most, three and a half, you will have foaming yeast. Now take a pan of flour, make a hole in the center, pour in the foaming yeast with as much water, gradually mixed with the yeast and flour, as will make the number of loaves desired. Do not make the dough very stiff. It should quake visibly when the pan is shaken. Cover well with dry flour and clean cloths, set in a warm place (temperature 80 degrees or 100 degrees Fahrenheit, or thereabouts), and, as soon as light, knead into loaves, which will soon rise enough for baking. Do not delay baking after the last rising, or your bread may have a slightly sour taste. Bake thoroughly, and no better or more wholesome fermented bread could be asked for.

Sweet potato bread

Dissolve one cake of compressed yeast in one-fourth cup of lukewarm water, add one cup of scalded milk (blood-warm), one tablespoonful of salt, one-half cup of sugar and one full cup of sweet potato, roasted, scraped from the skins, worked to a cream with three tablespoonfuls of melted butter, then allowed to cool. Beat all together until light, and stir in with a wooden spoon flour to make a soft dough. Throw a cloth over the bread-bowl and set in a warm place until well risen. Make into small loaves; let them rise for an hour, and bake in a brisk oven.

This is also a Virginia recipe. You may substitute Irish for sweet potatoes if you like.

Buttermilk bread

Into a chopping-bowl put a quart of flour which has been sifted three times with half a teaspoonful of baking powder, the same quantity of baking soda, and a quarter of a teaspoonful of salt. Chop into this flour a heaping tablespoonful of butter until the shortening is thoroughly incorporated. Work in gradually a pint of buttermilk—or enough to make a soft bread dough. Turn into a greased bread tin and bake in a steady oven for an hour. Cover with paper for the first half-hour, that the bread may have an opportunity to rise before the crust forms. Turn out and send to the table while very hot. Cut with a sharp knife into slices, which must be generously buttered. While perhaps this bread is not to be recommended to people who suffer from weak digestions, it will be liked by those whose gastric apparatus is in proper working order.

If you can not get buttermilk, loppered milk will do as well.

German coffee bread

Heat a cup of milk to scalding, but do not let it boil. Stir into it while hot two tablespoonfuls of cottolene (never lard), or butter, two tablespoonfuls of sugar and a little salt. Let it cool to blood-warmth, when add half a yeast-cake dissolved in one-quarter cup of blood-warm milk, and flour to make a stiff batter. Cover, and let rise until light. Add one-half cup of seeded raisins, cut into pieces. Spread one-half inch thick in a buttered dripping-pan; cover and let rise. Brush with melted butter, and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Bake in a moderate oven for half an hour. Cover for half of that time with thick paper.

Graham bread without yeast

To three and one-half cups of graham flour add two cups of sour milk, one cup of New Orleans molasses, a pinch of salt and one teaspoonful of soda dissolved in hot water. Bake in a slow oven one hour.

HOT BREAKFAST BREADS

Hot breads—comprising griddle-cakes, biscuits, muffins, Sally Lunns and crumpets—may not be wholesome for everybody. I seriously incline to the belief that they are not, especially in warm weather, and if partaken of too freely.

But the best types of these are good, and their appearance upon the board where John had looked for stale bread, or charred toast, is a means of breakfast grace not to be underrated by the wise housewife. She is a canny woman who runs down into the kitchen for ten or fifteen minutes on a stormy morning, or when the bread is especially dry, or John is “a wee bit blue,” and tosses up (always by rule and measure) ingredients that come out of a quick oven, puffy, hot, delicious, to gladden the boys’ hearts and give their father pleasanter food for consideration than business worries. If the men of any family were called upon for their opinion of what a dietetic crank, better versed in anatomy and chemistry than in courtesy, once anathematized at my breakfast table as “rank poison, madam! and nothing short of a sin!” they would say of his tabooed hot breads—“Naughty! but nice!”

One John—who hankers for the buckwheat cakes and sausage of his boyhood as the wanderers in the wilderness, their souls a-weary of manna, lusted for Egyptian flesh-pots—maintains, upon fairly tenable hygienic principles, that warm bread is made unwholesome because it is not masticated properly.

“We chew stale bread,” he says. “We bolt griddle-cakes and muffins because they are soft and easily swallowed. Give the salivary glands a chance to act upon them and they will not harm you.”

The prescription is easily tried.

Breakfast rolls (No. 1)

Sift a quart of flour with a half-teaspoonful of salt and a teaspoonful of sugar, rub into it a tablespoonful of butter, add a cup of warm milk and a third of a yeast-cake that has been dissolved in three tablespoonfuls of warm water, and knead this dough for twenty minutes. Set to rise for six or eight hours, make into rolls, put these into a greased baking-pan, and let them rise for half an hour longer before baking.

Breakfast rolls (No. 2)

Sift a quart of flour and stir into it a saltspoonful of salt, a teaspoonful of sugar, a cup of warm milk, two tablespoonfuls of melted cottolene or other fat, and two beaten eggs. Dissolve a quarter of a cake of compressed yeast in a little warm milk and beat in last of all. Set the dough in a bowl to rise until morning. Early in the morning make quickly and lightly into rolls, and set to rise near the range for twenty minutes. Bake for about an hour.

Parker house rolls

One cup of scalded milk (not boiled) left to cool until a little more than blood-warm, one-half yeast-cake dissolved in four tablespoonfuls of warm water, one tablespoonful of butter, three cups of flour, or a little less, one even tablespoonful of sugar, one-half teaspoonful of salt.

Melt the butter in the milk, add salt, sugar and yeast with rather less than half the flour. Make a sponge of these ingredients, beat hard for five minutes and set in a warm, sheltered place to rise.

It should be quite light in an hour and a half in winter, an hour in summer. Work in the rest of the flour until you have a soft dough. Knead three minutes and set to rise with a folded cloth over the bowl to exclude the air. When it has doubled its original bulk, turn out upon your kneading-board, and work quickly, but lightly, with fingers, not fists, for one minute. Roll with quick strokes and few into a thick sheet, rub over with melted butter (not hot). Roll up and knead one minute longer to incorporate the butter. Pull off bits of the dough three times as large as a walnut, and roll on the board into the desired shape. Arrange close together in the baking-pan. Cover and let them rise for half an hour, again doubling their size; then bake in a brisk, steady oven. Twenty minutes should suffice. When they have been in five minutes cover with whitey-brown grocer’s paper. Five minutes before the time is up take this off and brown.

Vienna rolls

Set a plain bread sponge at six o’clock in the evening. At bedtime make out a dough as directed for home-made bread. Cover in your mixing-bowl and set in a moderately warm place until six o’clock next morning. Make into round rolls as large as a small egg; set in a floured baking-pan so far apart that they will not touch as they rise; cover and leave for an hour. Just before they go into the oven cut half through the middle of each with a floured, sharp knife. Bake in a moderate oven to form a good crust. Cover at the end of ten minutes with paper. Remove this fifteen minutes later and brown.

Raised apple biscuits

(An old Virginia recipe)

One cup of scalded milk left to become blood-warm; one tablespoonful of butter melted in the milk; one tablespoonful of sugar; one-half teaspoonful of salt; one-half teaspoonful of baking-soda; one-half cake compressed yeast, dissolved in warm water; one cupful of grated apple; enough flour for making soft dough.

Mix the sugar with the butter and milk, and add the yeast. Sift salt twice with a cupful of flour. Make a hole in the middle and pour in the liquid. Beat into a batter and let it rise four hours. When light, sift the soda twice with another cupful of flour; grate the just-pared apple into the batter and beat in before it can change color. Finally, work in the sifted flour and soda. Let it rise for an hour, make into round, flat cakes with your hand; set close together in a pan, and when very light bake in a moderate oven. They are very good split open while hot, and buttered and sugared.

Sally Lunn

Sift together a pint of flour, a half-teaspoonful of salt and the same of powdered sugar.

In a large bowl beat stiff two eggs, pour on them a half-cup of warm milk, three tablespoonfuls of butter, melted, and a quarter of a tablespoonful of baking soda dissolved in a tablespoonful of hot water. Now slowly beat in the sifted flour and a quarter of a yeast-cake dissolved in half a cup of warm water. Whip to a smooth batter, and turn into a large greased mold to rise. In the morning set the mold in a steady oven and bake for half an hour, or until a straw pierced through the center of the loaf comes out clean. Turn out and serve at once.

Dried rusk

(An old Dutch family recipe)