BREAD in every household is de manded good bread. Not hit-and miss bread—fair at one baking, poor at another—but a sweet, wholesome, nutty-flavored loaf, beautiful chest nut brown all over, and so perfectly baked as to be palatable when ten days old.
The very best flour is the cheapest; it makes the finest bread, it contains the largest amount of nutrition, and it produces twice the quantity of wholesome bread that cheap flour does. In nearly every pantry you find two brands of flour; usually we call them bread flour and pastry flour. It is possible to make fair pastry and good cake from bread flour, but it is hard to make good bread from pastry flour. You can apply three tests to flour to discover whether it will make good bread; first, it should be of a creamy color; second, it will cake slightly when gathered up into the hand, falling apart in a gritty sort of way when the fingers are released; third, its wetting capacity is very different from poor flour, one quart of first class bread flour absorbing about one and a half cupfuls of water. Be fore purchasing a barrel, or even u half-barrel, of flour, buy a bagful, try one sort after another, use the same yeast, and the same care with the mixing, raising, and baking. Pres ently you will discover with what flour you have the best success; then stick to that brand. As for yeast; none is better than compressed yeast, which can be found fresh every day even in the smallest vil lage. If it has been kept too long, it will begin to show dark streaks, have u strong odor, and it will not break clean. Let us stop for a min ute to study the properties of yeast and its action when mixed with flour and liquid, then it will be much easier to understand what is happen ing during the process of bread mak ing. If you could look at a drop of yeast under a microscope, you would see a mass of tiny, rounded cells. You can imagine how tiny they are when I tell you there are fifty billion cells in a two-cent yeast cake.
Each cell is a minute sac filled with watery matter, and while you watch, you may see new cells bud ding out of the old ones. Yeast is
the same fungus which finds its way into cans of fruit that have not been hermetically sealed, and into maple sirup or any sweet liquid which is not properly protected from the air. Then, given a warm temperature and sugar for the creation of oxygen, it begins to work, as every housewife knows to her sorrow. The same working process is what we invite when we set bread with yeast. It will not begin its work until it has been given sugar, heat, and moisture. It thrives best at 78'; you can make it work more quickly by raising the temperature, but when it reaches 130° it is blighted, just as a plant dies in an overheated room. Now you know what happens when you set your bread near a hot stove or register—the " yeast has been killed." It is almost impossible, however, to kill yeast with cold. I have thawed it very gradually more than once and made excellent bread from it. You know how slowly bread rises after it has been chilled by a cold night.
Still it will rise, for the growth of the yeast was simply brought to a stand still.
In chemistry a name which means sugar fungus has been given to yeast. It needs, you remember, air as well as moisture to make it grow, and when sugar is at hand, it will supply itself with some of the oxygen con tained in it. Oxygen is what is required to raise every dough or batter; so frequently bread recipes call for a tablespoonful of sugar. Sugar is not a necessity, however, be cause yeast changes the starch in flour into sugar. It is needed only when the yeast is none too lively and requires a bit of help. Immediately when yeast goes into batter, which is the first step in bread making, a chemical change, which we call fer mentation, begins to take place. We help the yeast to begin work by hard beating of the batter, then by knead ing the dough, for both of thesc proc esses tend not only to mix the in gredients thoroughly, but also to inclose air; the longer the beating and kneading the more air is inclosed, and the spongier becomes your bread.