With these materials two
loaves can be made: Two
quarts of
flour, half a cupful of
yeast, nearly a pint and a half of water, half a table- spoonful each of
lard, sugar, and salt. Sift the flour into a bread- pan, and, after taking out a cupful for use in
kneading, add the salt, sugar, yeast, and the water, which must be about blood warm (or, say one hundred degrees, if in cold weather, and about eighty in the hot season). Beat well with a strong spoon. When well mixed, sprinkle a little flour on the board, turn out the
dough on this, and knead from twenty to thirty minutes. Put back in the pan. Hold the lard in the hand long enough to have it very soft. Rub it over the dough. Cover closely, that neither dust nor air can get in, and set in a warm place. It will rise in eight or nine hours. In the morning shape into loaves or rolls. If into loaves, let these rise an hour where the temperature is between ninety and one hundred degrees; if into rolls, let these rise an hour and a half. Bake in an oven that will brown a teaspoonful of flour in five minutes. (The flour used for this test should be put on a bit of crockery, as it will have a more even heat.) The loaves will need from forty-five to sixty minutes to bake, but the rolls will be done in half an hour if placed close together in the pan; and if
French rolls are made, they will bake in fifteen minutes. As soon as baked, the bread should be taken out of the pans and placed on a table where it can rest against something until cool. It should then be put in a stone pot or tin box, which has been thoroughly washed, scalded and dried, and be set away in a cool, dry place.
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