GENERAL DIRECTIONS.

The first thing required for making wholesome bread is the utmost cleanliness; the next is the soundness and sweetness of all the ingredients used for it; and, in addition to these, there must be attention and care through the whole process.

Salt is always used in bread-making, not only on account of its flavor, which destroys the insipid raw state of the flour, but because it makes the dough rise better.

In mixing with milk, the milk should be boiled—­not simply scalded, but heated to boiling over hot water—­then set aside to cool before mixing.  Simple heating will not prevent bread from turning sour in the rising, while boiling will act as a preventative.  So the milk should be thoroughly scalded, and should be used when it is just blood warm.

Too small a proportion of yeast, or insufficient time allowed for the dough to rise, will cause the bread to be heavy.

The yeast must be good and fresh if the bread is to be digestible and nice.  Stale yeast produces, instead of vinous fermentation, an acetous fermentation, which flavors the bread and makes it disagreeable.  A poor, thin yeast produces an imperfect fermentation, the result being a heavy, unwholesome loaf.

If either the sponge or the dough be permitted to overwork itself—­that is to say, if the mixing and kneading be neglected when it has reached the proper point for either—­sour bread will probably be the consequence in warm weather, and bad bread in any.  The goodness will also be endangered by placing it so near a fire as to make any part of it hot, instead of maintaining the gentle and equal degree of heat required for its due fermentation.

Heavy bread will also most likely be the result of making the dough very hard and letting it become quite cold, particularly in winter.

An almost certain way of spoiling dough is to leave it half made, and to allow it to become cold before it is finished.  The other most common causes of failure are using yeast which is no longer sweet, or which has been frozen, or has had hot liquid poured over it.

As a general rule, the oven for baking bread should be rather quick and the heat so regulated as to penetrate the dough without hardening the outside.  The oven door should not be opened after the bread is put in until the dough is set or has become firm, as the cool air admitted will have an unfavorable effect upon it.

The dough should rise and the bread begin to brown after about fifteen minutes, but only slightly.  Bake from fifty to sixty minutes and have it brown, not black or whitey brown, but brown all over when well baked.

When the bread is baked, remove the loaves immediately from the pans and place them where the air will circulate freely around them, and thus carry off the gas which has been formed, but is no longer needed.