Dough should be thoroughly mixed with a perforated spoon before kneading.

Make small loaves and bake well.

If your dough is not light and spongy enough, give your dough more age; if too much so, take it younger.

Cold and salt check fermentation; salt retards yeast; heat hastens it. Sugar is food for yeast and helps it to bud and grow.

Keep dough well covered to prevent crust from forming; a tin pan or earthen dish covered over bowl containing dough is better than a cloth or paper.

Bread is ready for the oven when the dent produced by pressing the finger on loaf will remain.

Bread and rolls should be set in a place only moderately warm. If dough becomes chilled, bread will be heavy, slow and coarse. If too warm, it will be coarse, dark and probably sour.

Let dough double in size before baking; this should require one hour.

If for any reason, dough has soured, a teaspoonful of soda dissolved in a little water will help it, but will not bring back the sweet flavor home-made bread should have.

It is impossible to tell in any recipe just how much flour to add to a dough or batter of any kind, as flour differs in many ways. Some flour requires more water or milk than others, so that the quantity required may vary for dough of a proper consistency.

General Hints On Bread Making

If any dark flour (Graham, etc.) is used for bread instead of white, use whole wheat flour, as it possesses more healthful properties than any other flour.

Scald one and one-half pints milk; dissolve one cake compressed yeast in two-thirds cupful lukewarm water; add two tablespoonfuls sugar; sift two sifters of flour in mixing bowl. When milk is lukewarm, add one large tablespoonful salt; add dissolved yeast to milk; make well in center of flour, and add milk. Stir with mixing spoon until flour is all taken up, then turn out on board and knead well for twenty minutes. Return to bowl and let raise in warm place, well covered. This will take from two to three hours. When sufficiently risen, punch down and let stand for three-quarters of an hour longer (doubled in bulk). Mold into loaves or rolls, handling the dough very gently. Put in well-greased pans, let raise and bake. Rolls should raise at least one-half hour and loaves one hour. Bake rolls twenty-five minutes and loaves one hour in wood or coal range, or forty-five minutes in gas range. If desired to make this bread over night, use only one tablespoonful sugar and one and one-half tablespoonfuls salt. Bread made by this method can be set at seven o'clock in the morning and should be out of the oven by noon.

Short Method For Bread Making

If desired to make bread at night, use method as above at night just before retiring, and in the morning dough will be ready to put into pans let raise and bake. If dough is made into loaves at seven in the morning, it should be baked by nine o'clock.

Take a piece of bread dough, put in a bowl, and add to it two eggs, one-half cup sugar and one-half cup butter. Mix this in thoroughly, adding just enough flour to keep it from sticking to bowl. Knead well and make into small rolls, put in well-greased pan and let raise until very light. Bake in quick oven for one-half hour.