Breadcrumbs

“ Unbolted flour, altogether more wholesome than the fine wheat, and when properly prepared more palatable,—rye-flour and corn-meal, each affording a thousand attractive possibilities,—each and all of these come under the general laws of bread-stuffs, and are worth a careful attention.
A peculiarity of our American table, particularly in the Southern and Western States, is the constant exhibition of various preparations of hot bread. In many families of the South and West, bread in loaves to be eaten cold is an article quite unknown. ”

“ If you have never made bread, ask mamma to let you try, and then, if once or twice she will stand by, and show you how to sift the flour, how to heap the right quantity into a deep pan, and make a hollow in the middle, into which you shall pour your lukewarm water, your yeast, your wee bit of sugar, and your spoonful of salt, following this by enough tepid water to make a soft dough, you will not require her instructions often. The art of making bread once learned is never forgotten. And how proud papa will be the first time he eats a slice of his daughter's home-made bread! ”

“ Deacon Ead's bread always takes the prize at the county fair. It looks like pound-cake. I don't want you girls to make flabby, porous bread, full of air-holes. I want you to learn how to knead it till it is just like an India-rubber cushion."
"If the dough is soft won't it stick to our fingers?" said Marjorie, with a dainty little shiver.
"Powder your hands very lightly with flour. That will keep the dough from sticking," said Miss Muffet, "and you will gain a knack after a while.
"5. The oven must be steadily hot, but not too quick, for bread. ”

“ One pound of pea-meal, or ground split-peas, added to every fourteen pounds of flour used for bread increases its nourishment, and helps to satisfy hunger.
Keep your bread in a covered earthen jar; when it is too stale to eat, or make into bread broth, dry it in a cool oven, or over the top of the fire, roll it with a rolling-pin, sift it through a sieve, and save the finest crumbs to roll fish or chops in for frying, and the largest for puddings. If a whole loaf is stale put it into a tight tin can, and either steam it, or put it into a moderately warm oven for half an hour ”

“ I particularly warn my readers against bakers seeking customers by cutting rates; they cannot [Pg 23] supply good bread at low rates without using inferior flour.
Home-made Bread.—To make good bread or rolls, take five potatoes; peel and cut them up, and boil in water enough to cover them; when done, mash them smooth in the water in which they were boiled; when cool, not cold, add a gill of liquid yeast, a dessert-spoonful of sugar, a salt-tablespoonful of lard, and a pint of flour. ”

“ A cupful of flour means about four good-sized slices of bread, and although a man can live very well upon two slices of bread for breakfast and two at dinner, with a rasher of bacon and a little weak tea at each meal, and nothing between meals except twelve hours' hard work in the open air, he ought not to be sneered at if he feels a craving for some little luxury in the way of sugar or butter, or even another slice of bread. ”

“ In all probability, as we have already seen, the first generations of our species, who became acquainted with the art of making bread, continued for many centuries to employ all the substance of the grain, which they coarsely mashed in their rude mortars or mills. And even since 59mankind began, by artificial means, to separate the bran from the flour, and to make bread from the latter, the more close and discerning observers among physicians and philanthropists, have perceived and asserted, that bread made of fine flour is decidedly less wholesome than that made of the unbolted wheat meal. ”

“ Witness the fashion of eating bread-and-butter at any place of refreshment, and the last thing you will be served with is a plateful of crusts of bread. Many establishments, indeed, make a regular practice of giving away their crusts as unsaleable. Thus, the rectangular loaves used for bread-and-butter in the aërated bread-shops are cut transversely into slices, each loaf thus yielding two end crusts which are put into baskets for the poor, only the soft crumby pieces being reserved for the customers. ”

“ She baked for us bread, fresh bread,—such bread! not staff of life,—life's vaulting-pole. She gave us blueberries with cream of cream. Ah, what a change! We sat on chairs, at a table, and ate from plates. There was a table-cloth, a salt-cellar made of glass, of glass never seen at camps near Katahdin. There was a sugar-bowl, a milk-jug, and other paraphernalia of civilization, including—O memories of Joseph Bourgogne!—a dome of baked beans, with a crag of pork projecting from the apex. ”

“ Breakfast was always a bowl of bread and milk boiled, and a rather thick slice of bread and butter after it. Fresh meat was sparingly given us at dinner, but we had plenty of broth, vegetables, and Yorkshire pudding. Our evening meal was bread and milk, rice or tapioca pudding, and a thick slice of sweet loaf—that is, bread made with currants, and caraway seeds, and a little sugar. But when we went out for dinner or tea, we had our share of the good things going; and, if the company was at our house, Ann Oddy usually put a couple of Christ Church tarts, or cheesecakes, among our plain bread. ”

“ Of all the artificially prepared articles of food which come upon our table, therefore, bread should be that one which, as a general fact, is uniformly preferred by our children and our household,—that one, the absence of which they would notice soonest, and feel the most,—that one which—however they may enjoy for a time the little varieties set before them—they would be most unwilling to dispense with—and which, if they were driven to the necessity, they would prefer to any other dish, as a single article of subsistence. ”

“ We made bread out of the dough which our comrades had prepared while we slept. The whole day, from dawn till ten at night, some of us sat at the table rolling out the dough, and, to avoid becoming torpid, we would constantly rock ourselves to and fro while the others kneaded in the flour. ”

“ If whole-meal bread is ordered of the English baker, he throws a handful of bran into this same flour; and the brown loaf looks tempting enough, but both it and the white one are alike tasteless and insipid, and destitute of nutritious qualities. What is really wanted for good bread is just simply the entire contents of the grain, as nature, who after all knows best, has given it to us. ”

“ The miller and the baker divide and subdivide; and instead of flour for bread, and the bran that remained, according to ancient practice, whereby the beggar as 145well as the prince was pleased, bread became a mystery, and we no longer knew what we were eating.”
“Our misfortune, in regard to bread, is, that we eat it too fine; we decline the use of barley in bread, having hardly enough for beer. Oats and pease are rejected: at length we reject even wheaten flour,—unless we are supplied with the finest parts only!—What will befall us in the end?” ”

“ I have made daily bread for myself and my daughter with pick, shovel, and barrow, in a dark coal-mine, in the same county where I was once the head of the ancient gentry, and where I saw the noblest in the land proud to break my bread and drink my wine. ”

“ Take pieces of raised bread-dough the size of an egg, drop them into smoking hot fat, and fry to a gold color, the same as doughnuts. Drain and serve on a napkin for breakfast, or sprinkle them with powdered sugar and ground cinnamon mixed, and serve them for luncheon.
BREAD ROLLS
For one panful of biscuits take as much raised bread-dough as will make one loaf of bread. Use any kind of bread-dough, but if no shortening has been used, add a tablespoonful of butter to this amount of dough. Add also more flour to make a stiffer dough than for bread. ”

“ You ought to see the bread we bake on Wednesdays and Saturdays! It's no wonder their poor papa can't get rich, he has to buy so much sugar for us to preserve with. We have our own wheat ground for flour,—but then there's that much less to sell. ”

“ In general all forms of bread may be divided into two great classes, leavened and unleavened. By far, the greater quantity of bread consumed belongs to the former class. Unleavened bread is used chiefly for certain religious festivals, in the form of biscuits or in certain varieties of Indian corn bread such as hoe cake, johnnie cake, etc. Of the leavened bread there are two distinct classes, namely, bread which is baked and eaten cold and bread which is consumed hot from the oven. ”

“ Whimpering because a girl had snatched his crust of bread:
Then he dropped; when some one raised him, it turned out he was dead."
"After us the deluge," was retorted with a laugh:
"If bread's the staff of life they must walk without a staff." ”

“ When bread crumbs are used for puddings or molds the quantity will vary with the kind of bread. Fewer will be required with home-made bread than with baker’s bread.
Bread, cracker or zwieback crumbs, corn meal, flour or browned flour No. 1, or a mixture of crumbs and brown or white flour may be used for rolling croquettes or cutlets, or for sprinkling the top of scallops or gratins.
Nut meal is suitable for the outside of rice croquettes and the top of many dishes.
Grated or chopped onion is apt to become bitter if prepared long before using. ”

“ It is my duty, as your friend and minister, to tell you that one half of your present hardships is owing to bad management. I often meet your children without shoes and stockings, with great luncheons of the very whitest bread, and that three times a day. Half that quantity, and still less if it were coarse, put into a dish of good onion or leek porridge, would make them [Pg 146] an excellent breakfast. Many too, of the very poorest of you, eat your bread hot from the oven; this makes the difference of one loaf in five; I assure you 'tis what I can not afford to do. ”

“ One drinks breakfast... Humid cemetery
earth smells like beloved blood.
City of winter... The scathing crossing
of a cart that dragging seems
an emotion of chained-up fasting.
One would want to knock on all the doors,
and ask for I don’t know whom; and later
to watch the poor people, and, crying gently,
to hand out little pieces of fresh bread to all of them. ”

“ In some houses, new and stale bread, at discretion, are provided; and many a stripling, lean and hungry as a greyhound, with a large appetite and a small purse, calls for a small plate, without vegetables, and fills up the craving crannies with an immoderate proportion of the staff of life, while the reckoning simply stands, "one small plate 6d., one bread 1d., one waiter 1d.;" ”

“ In almost every camp that is represented are men depicted as preparing bread against the return of the, of course, victorious soldiery: we see them mealing the corn, kneading the dough, making it into flat, round cakes, and, finally, piling these up in large heaps ready for the hungry warriors. ”

“ I will take with me bread for a week.”
“What!” said the tailor, “drag bread for seven days on one’s back like a beast of burden, and not be able to look about. I shall trust in God, and not trouble myself about anything! The money I have in my pocket is as good in summer as in winter; but in hot weather bread gets dry and mouldy into the bargain. Even my coat does not go as far as it might. Besides, why should we not find the right way? Bread for two days, and that’s enough.”
Each, therefore, bought his own bread. And then they tried their luck in the forest. ”

“ When my bread is made and brought upon the table, and I see my husband and children eat it and enjoy it, and hear them speak of its excellence, it affords me much satisfaction, and I am glad to know that I have contributed so much to their health and happiness; for, while my bread is so good that they prefer it to anything else upon the table, there is little danger of their indulging, to any injurious extent, in those articles of food which are less favorable to their health. ”

“ If every woman would see that her flour is sweet and good, that her yeast is fresh and lively, that her bread trough is kept perfectly clean and sweet, that her dough is properly mixed and thoroughly kneaded, and kept at a proper temperature, and at the proper time moulded into the loaf, and put into the oven, which has been properly heated, and there properly baked, then good bread would be as common as poor bread now is. ”

“ Besides march-pain or pain-main, and pain-puff, two sorts baked on special occasions, and rather entering into the class of confectionery, our better-to-do ancestors usually employed three descriptions of bread: manchete for the master's table, made of fine boulted flour; chete, of unboulted flour, but not mixed with any coarser ingredient; and brown-bread, composed of flour and rye meal, and known as maslin (mystelon) . ”

“ He had to watch that the flour was of the proper quality, and on feast days he was supposed to give a better kind of bread and a different shape of loaf. At times the community might have hot bread—a special treat—and if it were not quite ready, the meal could be delayed for a short time on such occasions. ”

“ A crust of bread is found in all sorts of places: in the street, at the corners of lanes and alleys, on heaps of rubbish. Do not imagine that this man, on the hunt for hard, dirty, disgusting pieces of bread, has fallen so low as to be obliged to live on the fruits of his discoveries. ”

“ It is not a pleasant thing to think or write about, but it is a stubborn fact, that upon thousands of tables, in otherwise comfortable [257] homes, good bread is an unknown phenomenon. I say phenomenon, because it would indeed be a marvellous estrangement of cause and effect were indifferent flour, unskillfully mixed with flat yeast, badly risen and negligently baked, to result in that pride of the notable housekeeper—light, sweet, wholesome bread. ”