Part 4 (1/2)

MISS CORSON. Use graham flour; mix your white flour with it, if it is for graham bread proper; if it is for graham gems use simply graham flour, water and salt, beaten together. Graham flour, salt and water beaten together into a form and baked in little b.u.t.tered tins is the graham bread pure and simple of the Grahamites. It is not necessary to knead bread more than once to secure lightness. I have already said that the longer you prolong the process of bread making the more of the nourishment of the flour you destroy. You will see when the bread is baked to-day, if we are fortunate in our baking, that the bread is perfectly light and of even grain.

BREAD AND APPLE PUDDING.

Stale bread cut in slices or small pieces, fill a pudding dish of medium size, only three eggs, or if eggs are very dear, four tablespoonfuls of sugar, and a pint of milk, or enough more milk to saturate the bread. If the bread is very stale and dry you will have to use a pint and a half of milk. Three eggs, a pint of milk, four tablespoons of sugar, will make about a quart of liquid. The custard you pour over the bread; let the custard soak into the bread; then on the top of the pudding put a layer of fruit about an inch thick. You may vary the fruit, using sliced apples, or dried apples which have been soaked over night, and then stewed tender, dried peaches treated in the same way, or canned peaches, canned pears--any fruit you like. In the summer, in berry season, use berries. If the fruit is sour sprinkle it with sugar; then put the pudding in the oven and bake it. You can use dried fruit with this pudding, such as raisins or currants, but you put the fruit in through the pudding instead of on top. If you want to make the pudding particularly good you will separate the white and yolks of the eggs, mix the yolks of the eggs with the milk and sugar; save the whites until the pudding is done; in that case you have to use a little more milk proportionately. Save the whites until the pudding is done, then beat them to a stiff froth and add to it three heaping tablespoons of powdered sugar, very gently mixing them, just as I mixed that light omelette yesterday. That makes what is called a _meringue_. Put the _meringue_ over the top of the pudding after it is done; run it through the oven for about a minute, just long enough to color it slightly, and then serve the pudding.

If you want the pudding entirely smooth when it is done, you must break the bread up in the custard before you bake it. My way is simply to saturate the bread with the custard. You can beat it if you wish. The pudding will be slightly liquid, like bread pudding, and then the fruit, if it is juicy, makes it still more liquid, and if you add the _meringue_, that of itself is a sauce. You will notice, as a rule, that I make everything as plain as possible, because I wish to demonstrate that plain dishes cooked with simple and few materials, can be very good. Perforated tin pie plates bake very nicely. Of course you want to take care to have the bottom crust thick enough, so that none of the juice from fruit pies will run through. If the oven is very hot on the bottom, it will not do to set a pie on the very bottom; a grating must be used. You will have to use your judgment about baking, watching the pie, and taking care that it does not get burnt.

(Returning to the bread making, Miss Corson continued:)

Now I am going to put the second cup of water and flour into the dough.

You want to remember, in raising bread, to keep it always at the same temperature until you get it light. It should be set where you can put your hand without burning. Keep the bowl, containing the sponge, just warm. You don't want it anywhere where it will get so hot as to scald the sponge. You can set the bowl in winter over boiling water to keep the temperature equal.

(A question was asked in regard to rhubarb pie.)

MISS CORSON. Some ladies put the rhubarb raw into the pies when they make rhubarb pies, trusting to its cooking while the crust is baking; others stew it with sugar before they put it in the pies. When it comes in from the market it should be cut in little pieces about half an inch long, and the outside, or thin skin, stripped off. It requires a great deal of sugar, whether you put it into the pie uncooked, or you first cook it. It makes an exceedingly nice acid pie. Usually the best way is to stew it first before you put it in the pie. That gives it to you in the form of a pulp. If you put it raw into the pie, to a certain extent the form is perfect, that is, it retains its little block-like shape after it is cooked.

(The bread now being ready to knead, Miss Corson recurred to that subject.)

I will take for the dough three cups of flour, about three heaping cupfuls besides the first one. There was an old adage to the effect that some imaginary substance called ”elbow grease” was necessary in kneading bread. I presume that is another name for force. But there is no special strength necessary. The bread is kneaded for the purpose of entangling a little more air in it, and you accomplish that by folding and refolding it, as I am doing; just using enough flour to keep it from sticking to your hands. In five minutes you will find that you have a rather smooth, soft dough, that does not stick to your hands. That is all you want. You will always find perfectly good yeast in any town, or you can make the yeast yourself.

_Question._ If you use twice as much flour would you use twice as much yeast?

MISS CORSON. If you want to raise the bread quickly you can increase the quant.i.ty of yeast in the same proportion that I have given it you here to-day, until you reach as much as six or seven pounds of flour, and then you would not need to use proportionately as much yeast. You could diminish the quant.i.ty a little. You see, the object of using plenty of yeast is to get the bread raised quickly.

_Question._ Doesn't home-made yeast make heartier bread than the other?

MISS CORSON. It makes bread less digestible--it may be heartier in that sense; the Irishman does not like his potatoes quite done; he thinks them heartier when they are somewhat indigestible. There could not be more nutritious or wholesome bread than this quickly raised bread. I have given you several very good reasons for raising bread as quickly as possible. Bread raised more slowly is not so nutritious, because some of the nutritive elements are destroyed in the fermentation which goes on in the slow process.

To make rolls, take small pieces of dough and make them round, and cut them nearly through the centre. Put the rolls in a b.u.t.tered pan; cover them up with a cloth and let them rise double their original size, where you can bear your hand. Then bake them. Let the dough always rise until it is twice its size before baking. I think I have already explained to you that if you want the bread or roll glossy you can brush it with sugar and water, or melted b.u.t.ter. These rolls will be set on the top of the stove to rise, just like bread. As soon as they are twice their size they go into the oven to bake.

_Question._ Do you ever use any shortening in the rolls?

MISS CORSON. You can use it if you want to. Knead b.u.t.ter in the part of the dough that is designed for rolls--say a tablespoonful of b.u.t.ter; put it in when you are doing the five minutes' kneading. There is no reason why you should not knead in anything that your fancy calls for, providing it is edible.

Now I will show you how you can prevent the juice running out of fruit pies. For fruit pies--pies made in the summer time, of juicy fruits--better use no under crust. Take a deep dish; put the fruit into the dish, heaping it a little, just as I heaped the apples; wet the edges of the dish with cold water; lay the pastry on the dish and press it very slightly, _not on the edge itself_, because that makes the pastry heavy, but just inside of the edge. As I press it I leave the edge intact; press the pastry against the dish all the way round; then with your finger make a little groove all the way round your pie, inside the edge of the crust; then, with a little knife, cut holes in the groove. Now, when the juice of the fruit boils out, as it will, instead of forcing its way out of the edges, the crust will be held upon the wet dish, and the fruit juice will boil out in the little groove and stay there. To serve the pie, you cut the upper crust with a sharp knife, and serve with a spoon, taking a piece of crust and plenty of fruit out on each plate. No under crust is there. If you have an under crust with very juicy pie it will be pretty sure to be soggy and heavy. The English way of serving these pies is a very nice one, and is, as I have described, with whipped cream. Serve whipped cream with a fruit pie.

Among other nice things that we can not get in this country is Devons.h.i.+re cream, which is a cream almost as thick as the hard sauce you make by mixing powdered sugar and egg together; it is thick enough almost to cut. We can not get that cream here, but use thick, nice cream, sweetened or not, as you like. One of my English friends, who first taught me this way of serving pie, said that at her home they never sweetened the cream; they simply whipped it to a froth and served it piled up on a dish by the side of the pie. The pie was taken out on a plate, and then two or three spoonfuls of this whipped cream laid on the plate by the side of the pie. You can sweeten it if you like.

MERINGUE.

I will next make a _meringue_. I have already told you to use the whites of three eggs, three tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar--and that really must be pulverized very fine and sifted. In beating the eggs you can always get them light very quickly, if they are reasonably cold in the beginning, by beating with a change of movement. Beat until your hand grows tired, and then simply change the way you hold the beater. Don't stop beating. Of course you can use any kind of an egg-whip you like.

This which I use is made of twisted wire. Only take care to have the egg beaten entirely stiff. Do not have any liquid egg in the bottom of the bowl. In the summer time you can cool the egg by putting in a little pinch of salt if it does not beat stiff at once. I would not advise using an egg that had the least odor about it. As soon as the custard in the pudding is done we are going to take the pudding out of the oven, and put the _meringue_ on the top, whether the apples are done or not.

It does not do any harm to stop beating for awhile. Mix this, using a cutting motion, not a stirring motion. Mix until the sugar and egg are smoothly blended, and the _meringue_ is ready to use.

LECTURE FIFTH.

Our lesson this morning is cream of salmon; shoulder of lamb, boned and roasted; force meat or stuffing for roast meats; potatoes, boiled and baked; and cheese crusts. I shall begin with the lamb or mutton.

Remove the bone first, then stuff and bake the meat, as I have no facilities for roasting with this stove; but I will have something to say about the process of roasting in the course of the lesson. A great many of the ladies think that the shoulder or fore quarters of meat is not so desirable a piece for use as the loin or hind quarter, but that is a mistake. In the first place the proportion of bone in the fore quarter is very much less than in the hind quarter. In one lesson that I gave, about a week ago, at Cleveland, I had a butcher remove all the bones from a fore quarter weighing between five and six pounds, and then weighed the bones: They weighed a pound and a quarter. I also had him remove the bones from the hind quarters and weighed them, and they weighed more. The meat of the fore quarter is sweeter, and quite as nutritious as the meat of the hind quarter, and the fore quarter is always cheaper. So that, you see, on the score of flavor and economy, the fore quarter is more desirable for use than the hind quarter. In England, where mutton is always in perfection, it is the fore quarter or shoulder of mutton that is served to guests, and the hind quarter is the one that is used for the family dinner.