378 ANNUAL REPORT 



Bread made quickly contains a large proportion of nitrogenous 

 food elements, but if many hours intervene between the time of 

 setting the ferment, and baking the loaves, much of the nutriment 

 of the flour is lost The bread may be light, white and all right 

 so far as the eye can discern, but it has lost the rich sweet taste 

 and odor, and as a food of support and growth it is greatly inferior 

 to that made with strong yeast, and in a short time. In five hours 

 from the time the bread is mixed it should be removed from the 

 oven. This gives us the most perfect vinous or alcoholic fermentation 

 produced by pure yeast, and the short time does not allow the fer- 

 mentation to go too far, nor any foreign ferment to spoil the nutri- 

 ment in the dough. Compressed yeast used in the proportion of 

 a cake (J oz.) to one pint of wetting, mixing up at once without set- 

 ing a ferment will give this perfect bread. Of home made yeast, 

 use h pint to one quart of wetting. At bed time take the yeast and 

 an equal quantity of water and flour enough to make a batter. 

 Have this mixture at a temperature of 75° F, and put it in a bowl 

 or crock as warm as the hand; wrap up well, letting the outside 

 covering be woolen. The object of this is simply to form new 

 yeast germs, or to allow the yeast plants to multiply, so as to have 

 more of them to work on the flour in the morning. When ready, 

 mix the bread, add one quart of milk which with the water and 

 yeast makes one quart. 



Bread is on our tables in some form every meal, yet there cer- 

 tainly is no article of food more poorly prepared or the principles 

 governing its preparation less understood. In my Institute work 

 last winter I made a special study of the bread served us. The 

 best fermented bread we had was that baked in rolls or biscuits for 

 supper. The loaves of bread were much poorer. Discussing the 

 subject of bread with the cook I invariably found that while the 

 rolls or biscuit were baked between five and six o'clock, the loaves 

 were not baked until after supper, from eight to nine o'clock. The 

 additional three hours ruined the bread. 



I have frequently asked ladies if they would as willingly sell 

 bread as butter and always receive the same reply, "No, we can 

 make a uniform article of butter, but there is so much luck in 

 bread-making sometimes it is good and sometimes poor." Yet 

 there is no luck about it; have the conditions right and you have 

 good bread every time. Have wrong conditions and you have 

 poor results whether it be bread or butter. Ptight temperature 

 (75° F. ) in bread-making is just as important as is right tempera- 

 ture in churning. 



