To Make Bread

The first process is to prepare the ferment. This is formed by boiling thoroughly a peck and a half of potatoes, with their skins on, which you place in a barrel kept exclusively for that purpose, adding six pounds of flour, and mashing them well together. This is called “scalding the flour.” Then add cold water until it is cool enough to enable you to put your hands in, and break up the potatoes as fine as possible, so as to obtain all their virtue. Then add about six pailsful of warm water and six quarts of yeast. Stir it well together, and place it in a warm spot, where it will not be disturbed. Two good-sized tubs, made of salt or sugar barrels, would be the best receptacle for it, as it requires space to work in. This should be made at night, and will be ready for use in the morning after it is carefully strained.

The second process is making the dough. This is done by sifting into the trough a barrel and a half of flour, one-third of which is pinned or blocked up at one end by the “pin board” or wooden slide. To this you add three and a half pounds of salt and three and a half pailsful of “ferment,” with four pailsful of hot water—not so hot, however, as to scald your ferment—(in summer cold water is used instead of hot,) and mix well together, kneading thoroughly and faithfully, adding to it gradually all the flour in the trough until it is of one consistency. It must then be placed at one end of the trough, and again pinned in by the slide, leaving space enough, however, to allow it to prove. To effect this requires at least two hours, when it will be ready to “work off,” which is done by “throwing” it out of the trough, in masses, on to the table or cover on the other side of the room or tent. It is then cut into pieces and weighed, or “scaled off,” and immediately moulded into shapes or loaves. This requires one man to scale, one to form into loaves, and a third to “pan it away,” where it remains for at least forty minutes before placing it in the oven. In the meantime the ovens are heated, the coals and ashes drawn out, and the interior thoroughly swabbed out, top and bottom. If too hot, wet the swab and dampen the oven. The pans containing the dough are then set in, by means of the peel, or wooden spade, the doors closed, and the hot coals and ashes placed against them, in order to heat all sides equally. Fifty minutes is the time generally required to bake the regular sized army loaves; if larger, a longer period will be demanded.

The amount of ferment made in accordance with this receipt will be sufficient for three batches of 288 loaves each. The first batch will require four hours in preparing and baking; the second and third two hours each.

Potatoes, hops, and malt should always be kept on hand, and a portion of the yeast invariably retained for stock. To commence with, it will be necessary to obtain brewers’ yeast; but, after making the first essay, you can always be independent.

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Transcriber’s Notes

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Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected.

Illustrations have been moved nearer to the text to which they refer.