Try the yeast always by setting to raise in a cup of lukewarm water or milk, if you use compressed yeast add salt and sugar.

If it rises in the course of ten or fifteen minutes, the yeast is fit to use.  In making bread always use sifted flour.  Set a sponge with lukewarm milk or water, keeping it covered in a warm place until very light, then mold this sponge by adding flour, until very light into one large ball, then knead well and steadily for twenty minutes.  Set to rise again in a warm place free from drafts, and when it has risen to double its former bulk, take a knife, cut through the dough in several places, then place this dough on a baking board which has been sprinkled with flour.  Work with the palm of the hand, always kneading towards the centre of the ball (the dough must rebound like a rubber ball).  When this leaves the board and the hands perfectly clean the dough may be formed into loaves or rolls.

Place in pan, greased slightly with a good oil, let rise until the imprint of the finger does not remain, and bake.

The oven for baking bread should be hot enough to brown a teaspoon of flour in five minutes.

If baked in a coal range, the fire must be just the proper heat so as not to have to add fuel or shake the stove.

If baked in a gas range, light oven to full heat five minutes before putting the bread in the oven, and bake in a moderately hot oven forty-five minutes, unless the loaves are very large when one hour will be the proper time.

When taken from the oven, the bread may be wrapped in a clean towel wrung out of warm water (this prevents the crust from becoming hard); place bread in slanting position or allow it to cool on a wire rack.

WHITE BREAD

Set the dough at night and bake early in the morning; take one-half cake of compressed yeast, set in a cup of lukewarm milk or water adding a teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of sugar.  Let this rise, if it does not, the yeast is not fresh or good.  Measure eight cups of sifted flour into a deep bread bowl, add one teaspoon of salt; make a depression in the centre, pour in the risen yeast and one cup of lukewarm milk or water.  In winter be sure that the bowl, flour, milk, in fact everything has been thoroughly warmed before mixing.  Mix the dough slowly with a wooden spoon and then knead as directed.

This amount will make two loaves, either twisted or in small bread pans.  Bake forty-five minutes in a moderate oven.

If the bread is set in the morning use a cake of compressed yeast and bake the loaves in the afternoon.

INDIVIDUAL LOAVES

Make dough according to the above recipe.  Work small pieces of dough into strands a finger long, and take three strands for each loaf.  Make small as possible, brush with beaten egg; or sweetened water and sprinkle with poppy seed (mohn).  Allow them to rise before setting them in the oven.  These are called “Vienna loaves” and are used at weddings, parties and for the Succoth festival in the Succah.