Household Bread
Source: Eliza Acton, 1845
Instructions
- Put half a bushel of flour (more or less, according to the consumption of the family) into the kneading tub or trough, and hollow it well in the middle.
- Dilute a pint of yeast as it is brought from the brewery, or half the quantity if it has been washed and rendered solid, with four quarts or more of lukewarm milk or water, or a mixture of the two.
- With a wooden spoon, stir into it from the surrounding part as much flour as will make a thick batter. Throw a handful or two of flour over it, and leave this, which is called the leaven, to rise before proceeding further.
- In about an hour it will have swollen considerably and burst through the coating of flour on the top. Then pour in as much more warm liquid as will convert the whole, with good kneading -- and this should not be spared -- into a firm dough, of which the surface should be entirely free from lumps or crumbs.
- Throw a cloth over it and let it remain until it has risen very much a second time, which will be in an hour, or something more if the batch be large.
- Work it lightly up, mould it into loaves of from two to three pounds weight, and send them directly to a well heated oven.
- Bake them from an hour and a half to an hour and three-quarters.
- Proportions (her closing line, which is also the only place salt appears at all): flour, 1/2 bushel; salt (when it is liked), 4 to 6 oz.; yeast, 1 pint unwashed, or 1/2 pint if purified; milk, or water, 2 quarts: 1 to 1-1/2 hour. Additional liquid as needed.
- Obs.: Brown bread can be made exactly as above, either with half meal and half flour mixed, or with meal only. Meal will absorb more moisture than fine flour and will retain it rather longer; brown bread should always be thoroughly baked.
- Remark: it has been very erroneously asserted in one or two works that bread made with milk speedily becomes sour. This is never the case when it is properly baked and kept, and when the milk used for it is perfectly sweet; the experience of many years enables her to speak positively on this point.