The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery

or absorbed; let it cool until it is only luke-warm; mix into it nearly four pounds of flour, two teaspoonfuls of salt, and four tablespoonfuls of yeast; knead it until it is smooth and shining, let it rise once before the fire, make it up into loaves with the little flour reserved from the four pounds, and bake it thoroughly. 259. =Potato Bread.=--Take good, mealy boiled potatoes, in the proportion of one-third of the quantity of flour you propose to use, pass them through a coarse sieve into the flour, using a wooden spoon and adding enough cold water to enable you to pass them through readily; use the proper quantity of yeast, salt, and water, and make up the bread in the usual way. A saving of at least twenty per cent is thus gained. 260. =Pulled Bread.=--Take from the oven an ordinary loaf of bread when it is about _half baked_, and with the fingers, _while it is yet hot_, pull it apart in egg-sized pieces of irregular shape: throw them upon tins, and bake them in a slow oven to a rich brown color. This bread is excellent to eat with cheese or wine. Where bread is made with baking powder the following rules should be closely observed: If any shortening be used, it should be rubbed into the flour before it is wet; _cold_ water or sweet milk should always be used to wet it, and the dough should be kneaded immediately, and only long enough to thoroughly mix it and form it into the desired shape; it should then be placed in a well-heated oven and baked quickly--otherwise the carbonic acid gas will escape before the expanded cells are fixed in the bread, and thus the lightness of the loaf will be impaired. As a very large margin of profit is indulged in by the manufacturers of baking powders, we subjoin a good formula for making the article at home at a considerable saving. 261. =Baking Powder.=--Mix thoroughly by powdering and sifting together several times the following ingredients; four ounces of tartaric acid, and six