BREAD-MAKING

When the hread is cold, place in a stone jar or tin box, which must be thoroughly washed, scalded and dried each bak- ing day. Another good receptacle for bread is a tin wash- boiler with a close cover, kept for this purpose alone, but a still better one is the tin box with shelves as illus- trated. When small single loaf pans are used, the bread may be removed to cool, the pans washed and dried, Bread & Cake Box. aud thc loaves aftcrwards replaced each in its pan, and then set away in a box or boiler. The pan helps to keep the bread moist and palatable for several days.

There are three critical points in the process of bread-making : the condition of the yeast, which must never be used if sour ; the temperature where the bread is set to rise, which must not be so hot as to scald ; and the temperature of the oven, which must be uni- form, neither too hot nor too cold.

In cutting warm bread for the table, heat the knife, and whether

be eaten. It is better to replenish the Bread Knife.

bread-plate once or even twice during a meal than to havd" slices left over to dry up and waste.

JVhen using coal, put into tlie fire-box enough to finish the bak- ing ; adding more during the process is apt to render the oven-heat irregular. When Avood is used, make a good hot fire, see that the stove has a good, free draft, and let it cool to an even, steady heat before putting the bread in the oven. The finest bread may be com- pletely spoiled in baking, and a freshly-made fire can not be easily regulated.

Attention to neatness, important in all cookery, is doubly im- portant in bread-making. Be sure that the hair is neatly combed and put up (which ought to be done before the dress is put on in the morning), and that the hands, arms and finger-nails are scru- pulously clean. A neat calico apron with bib, using safety pins in fastening, and sleeves of dress well-tucked up and fastened so that they will not come down, add much to the comfort in this the most important task of the kitchen queen.

A great advance has been made in milling during the past few years, the flour made by the "New Process," as it is called, being much

18 BREAD-MAKING.

more nutritious than the old-fashioned white flour, which contained very little of the gluten of the wheat. The "New Process" flour made at the great Minfieapolis mills from the hard spring wheat grown in the Northwest, brings the highest price of any flour in the market and is the strongest and best. Another flour known as the Whole Wheat Four is excellent for bread-making and is reduced as is claimed by a secret process. It is made into bread by the same recipes as white flour. Many preparations of wheat and grain are sold by grocers which are prepared by spome special process, and are excellent in their way, though more expensive than the plain flour. Among these are the Health Food. Granula and various prepara- tions of the kind. Graham is often made from the poorest wheat, but some mills, like Readshaw's at Dansville, New York, make a specialty of Graham, cracked Avheat, and rye flour, and corn meal from selected grain, and furnish a choice article which is much more wholesome and just as cheap as the inferior article. Cerealine, a new preparation, is a flaky substance, the product of white Indian corn, readily soluble, easily digested, and containing a large pro- portion of nitrogenous matter. A valuable peculiarity of this pro- duct "is that it can not be prepared from unsound grain. It is certainly the highest and most scientific product of corn that has been introduced for public consideration, and is sometimes called Shredded Maize. It somewhat resembles cocoanut, only it is in small flakes, but when sprinkled on cake has quite the appear- ance of cocoanut. Griddle cakes, mufiins, bread, breakfast rolls and sweet puddings are delicious made of it, and in fact it can enter into the preparing of an

There is also a brown-bread preparation, recently introduced, which saves much of the difficult details necessary to make this ex- cellent Boston dish; and when two boiled potatoes are rubbed through a sieve, thinned ^^^th nearly a pint of water and then the meals added, or the directions with package as above followed, the bread is simply perfect. For fuller directions in regard to flours, etc., see Marketing.