To Make a Peck of Good Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Make the potato sponge
Peel and boil the potatoes.
Beat the boiled potatoes to a cream while warm.
Add 1 pint of cold water to the potato cream.
Strain the mixture through a colander.
Add 1/2 pint of good yeast to the strained mixture (the yeast should have been put in water overnight to take off its bitterness).
Stir all well together with a wooden spoon.
Make the dough
Pour the mixture into the centre of the flour.
Mix it to the substance of cream.
Cover it over closely.
Let it remain near the fire for an hour.
Add the 5 pints of water, milk-warm, with 2 oz of salt.
Pour this in, and mix the whole to a nice light dough.
Let it remain for about 2 hours.
Make it into 7 loaves.
Bake
Bake for about 1-1/2 hour in a good oven.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures. See the original page.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Yeast
- Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become light.
The step that matters
Letting the dough rise near the fire. Yeast works fastest at warm temperatures, so the covered mixture needs gentle warmth to ferment. If it is too cold, rising slows and the loaves turn out dense.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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