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I thought you might like to see this recipe reprinted from Domestic Cookery
from 1864. It was an English book.
“To make bread let flour be kept four to five weeks before it is begun to
be used to bake with. Put half a bushel of good flour into a trough or
kneading tub; mix with it between four and five quarts of warm water and a
pint and a half of good hop yeast. Stir well with your hands until it
becomes tough. Let it rise about an hour and a half or less if it rises
fast; then, before it falls, add four more quarts of warm water and half
pound of salt. Work it well and cover with a cloth. Put the fire then into
the oven and by the time it is warm enough the dough will be ready. Make
the loaves about five pounds each; sweep out the oven very clean and quick,
and put in the bread; shut it up close and two and one half hours will bake
it. In summer the water should be milk warm, in winter a little more and in
frosty weather as hot as you can well bear your hands in but not scalding
else the whole will be ruined. If baked in tins the crust will be very
nice.
The oven should be round, not long; the roof twenty to twenty-four inches
high, the mouth small and the door of iron to shut close. This construction
will save firing and time and bake better than long and high-roofed ovens.”
From
Yields
1 Servings