Page:The Boston cooking-school cook book.djvu/80

59 and continue browning for the next twenty minutes. The last fifteen minutes it should finish baking, when the heat may be reduced. When bread is done, it will not cling to sides of pan, and may be easily removed. Biscuits require more heat than loaf bread, should continue rising the first five minutes, and begin to brown in eight minutes. Experience is the best guide for testing temperature of oven. Various oven themometers have been made, but none have proved practical. Bread may be brushed over with melted butter, three minutes before removal from oven, if a more tender crust is desired.

Remove loaves at once from pans, and place side down on a wire bread or cake cooler. If a crisp crust is desired, allow bread to cool without covering; if soft crust, cover with a towel during cooling. When cool, put in tin box or stone jar, and cover closely.

Never keep bread wrapped in cloth, as the cloth will absorb moisture and transmit an unpleasant taste to bread. Bread tins or jars should be washed and scalded twice a week in winter, and every other day in summer; otherwise bread is apt to mould. As there are so many ways of using small and stale pieces of bread, care should be taken that none is wasted.

Unfermented bread is raised without a ferment, the carbon dioxide being produced by the use of soda (alkaline salt) and an acid. Soda, employed in combination with cream of tartar, for raising mixtures, in proportion of one-third soda to two-thirds cream of tartar, was formerly used to a great extent, but has been generally superseded by baking powder.

Soda bicarbonate (NaHCO3) is manufactured from sodium chloride (NaCl), common salt or cryolite.

Baking powder is composed of soda and cream of tartar in definite, correct proportions, mixed with small quantity of dry material (flour or cornstarch) to keep action from taking place. If found to contain alum or ammonia, it is