622 Reading-Course for Farmers' Wives. 



The capacity of eggs (especially of the whites) to entangle air makes 

 them a valuable aid in making doughs light — popovers, cream puffs, 

 souffles and many cakes are made light by eggs alone. Many beaters 

 have been devised to help in this process. Some mixtures, however, 

 such as cream puffs, require no separate beating of eggs, only a thorough 

 incorporation with other ingredients. Success in baking this group of 

 doughs depends upon a very moderate oven, since egg hardens at a low 

 temperature and if the oven is too hot a crust forms before the dough 

 has time to rise. But such things must not be taken from the oven until 

 the moisture is well dried out. 



4c. Chemical means. 



The third way of making doughs light results from the chemical union 

 of bicarbonate of soda with an acid. This is a comparatively modern 

 achievement. Those of us who have inherited our great grandmothers' 

 cook books probably will search in vain for any reference to baking 

 powder. This material, like the modern yeast cake, is an evolution from 

 more primitive substances. Even soda is rarely mentioned in old cook 

 books, but saleratus and pearl-ash are common terms. Some who read 

 this may have heard narratives of the old pioneer days when the house- 

 keeper scraped up the pearl-colored ashes from her fire-place, stirred 

 them up with a little water and after it had settled used the alkaline solu- 

 tion to neutralize the acidity of sour milk in making her "Johnny cake " 



or doughnutSc 



Modem cook books deal so little with sour milk and soda that young, 

 city-bred housekeepers do not realize what good results may be attained 

 by its use and how much of it is w^asted. Nor is this as uncertain a 

 process as some would have us think, for the acidity of thick or clabbered 

 sour milk is not very variable. Experience has taught us that one level 

 teaspoon of soda will neutralize the acidity of one pint of sour milk. It 

 has been the common custom to stir the soda into the sour milk and then 

 mix it with the flour, but less of the gas escapes if the soda is sifted 

 into the flour and then the milk stirred in. Every bubble of gas that 

 breaks when the soda is first mixed with the milk leaves just so much 

 less to puff up the mass of dough. 



Molasses, notwithstanding its sweetness, is also acid and usually 



