Bordyke Bread (Author’s receipt)

Instructions

1. Mix with a gallon of flour a large teaspoonful of fine salt, and make a hollow in the centre.
2. Pour into the hollow two tablespoonsful of solid, well purified yeast, gradually diluted with about two pints and a half of milk, and work it into a thick batter with the surrounding flour.
3. Strew a thick layer of flour over the top and leave it to rise from an hour to an hour and a half.
4. Knead it up with as much more warm skimmed milk -- or half new milk and half water -- as will render it quite firm and smooth without being very stiff. Let it rise another hour.
5. Divide it into three loaves. Put them into square tins slightly buttered, or into round baking pans.
6. Bake them about an hour and a quarter in a well-heated oven. The dough can instead be formed into household loaves if preferred, and sent to the oven in the usual way.
7. For a finer and more spongy bread wanted for immediate eating: substitute new milk for skimmed, dissolve in it about an ounce of butter, leave it more liquid when the sponge is set, and let the whole be lightly kneaded into a lithe dough. Bread made so will be excellent when new, and for a day or so after it is baked, but it will become dry sooner than the other.
8. Proportions (her closing line): flour, 1 gallon; salt, 1 teaspoonful; skimmed milk, 2-1/2 pints, to rise from 1 to 1-1/2 hour. Additional milk, 1 to 2 pints: to rise 1 hour. 3 loaves, baked 1-1/4 hour.
9. Obs. 1: A few spoonsful of cream will wonderfully improve either of the above receipts, and sweet buttermilk substituted for the other milk will give the bread the shortness of a cake; she particularly recommends it for trial when it can be procured.
10. Obs. 2: Shallow round earthen pans answer much better, she thinks, than tins for baking bread; they should be slightly rubbed with butter before the dough is put into them.