When cake
or bread is made heavy by baking too quickly, it is because the
immediate formation of the top crust hinders the exhaling of the
moisture in the centre, and prevents the air-cells from cooking. The
weight also of the crust pressing down on the doughy air-cells below
destroys them, producing that horror of good cooks, a heavy streak.
The problem in baking, then, is the quick application of heat rather
below than above the loaf, and its steady continuance till all the
air-cells are thoroughly dried into permanent consistency. Every
housewife must watch her own oven to know how this can be best
accomplished.
Bread-making can be cultivated to any extent as a fine art--and the
various kinds of biscuit, tea-rusks, twists, rolls, into which bread
may be made, are much better worth a housekeeper's ambition than the
getting-up of rich and expensive cake or confections. There are also
varieties of material which are rich in good effects. 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--all of these come under the general
laws of bread-stuffs, and are worth a careful attention.
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