THE BAKERS GUIDE

Quarter-Sponge.— Stir stiff batter in a tub with 8 quart* barm, 12 quarts warm water, \ lb. salt, and sufficient flour ; this will be ready in about 10 hours. Then break into this 40 more quarts water and 2 lbs. salt ; turn it into the trough and make a nice springy sponge ; this will be in three or four hours. When it begins to subside mix in 6 more quarts water, and ijlbs. salt, and make into a tough, light dough, using plenty of labour. Watch this dough— if the weather is warm it will fly ; don't let it get ahead ; follow it up quickly. Note,— In working with flour barms you have already generated a good body of yeast and gas in the barm, therefore use plenty of u pickle " in the later stages. The sponges are the most particular part. Stir tough, not hard and tight, but spongy sponges, a stiff batter that will bear your arms to take some up without breaking. Join your hands together under the batter, and flap it over and mark it across two or three times, as our " Jock " used to say, " to keep the witches out," dry-dusting every time. It is now becoming customary to use a little distiller's compressed in the last stage of the process, which points to the early substitution of distiller's compressed in the place of Parisian. If it is found useful to use a little to help the Parisian, why not use it altogether, and let the risky, troublesome Parisian go entirely.

There are several kinds of these cookies and bread which English, Welsh, and Irish will find it commercially useful to imitate. London, Dublin, and other large towns will find a ready sale for the halfpenny cookies. The Scotch pan and plain bread is very much superior in fineness of texture and volume to that of English and Welsh towns, though Ireland has not much to learn in this matter of fineness and bulk, perhaps rather, like Scotland, just a little to unlearn, and for this reason their mode of making is not reproduced here : it is so wasteful of time, of labour, and of nett profit. Nor is the tempera- ture of the water given. It is dangerons to do so ; it is the base of all, but it is a base that can only be laid down in the identical spot, the strength and temperature of the flour, and heat of atmosphere inside and outside, are factors which must be known before doing so.

The formula for plain, pan, and " French " here given is de- signed to meet the needs of those who sponge or make dough overnight for use in the morning ; and to those who have read the articles upon straight doughs, the seven phases in the life of a loaf, and yeast functioning, herein, it will be apparent that the twelve hours in the dough stage is not arbitrary to the pro«

Scotch Bread and Cookies*