The complete confectioner, pastry-cook, and baker : plain and practical directions for making confectionary and pastry, and for baking; with upwards of five hundred receipts consisting of directions for making all sorts of preserves, sugar-boiling, comfits, lozenges, ornamental cakes, ices, liqueurs, waters, gum-paste ornaments, syrups, jellies, marmalades, compotes, bread-baking, artificial yeasts, fancy biscuits, cakes, rolls, muffins, tarts, pies, &c. &c. With additions and alterations / by Parkinson, practical confectioner, Chestnut Street.

  • Parkinson, Eleanor.
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The complete confectioner, pastry-cook, and baker : plain and practical directions for making confectionary and pastry, and for baking; with upwards of five hundred receipts consisting of directions for making all sorts of preserves, sugar-boiling, comfits, lozenges, ornamental cakes, ices, liqueurs, waters, gum-paste ornaments, syrups, jellies, marmalades, compotes, bread-baking, artificial yeasts, fancy biscuits, cakes, rolls, muffins, tarts, pies, &c. &c. With additions and alterations / by Parkinson, practical confectioner, Chestnut Street. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    132/168 (page 132)
    Flour-paste may be considered as merely a viscid and elastic tis- sue, the interstices of which are filled with starch, albumen, and sugar. We know that it is from the gluten that the dough derives its property of rising on the admixture of leaven ; the leaven acting on the sweet principle of the wheat, gives rise in succession to the vinous and acetous fermentation, and of consequence to alcohol, acetic, and carbonic acids. The latter gas tends to fly off, but the gluten resists its disengagement, expands like a membrane—forms a multitude of little cavities, which give lightness and sponginess to the bread. To judge of good yeast, no positive directions can be given. Yeast should always be fresh, and if made from table ale it is better, because less bitter than that made from very strong ale. If the yeast is sour, the dough will not rise. Originally what is called leaven was uni- formly employed, and it is now sometimes used as a substitute for yeast. Those who use it, keep a pound or more dough from baking to baking. It is kept in a wooden barrel, or bowl, covered with flour. Before it is fit to use, it must be both stale and sour. Bread made in this way-is said to be more digestible, but it is not so pleasant to the taste. Leaven is now only used at sea. A good oven is necessary for the production of good bread. If the oven be heated, as in country places, by dry wood, furze, or fern, burnt in the oven itself, it ought to be built round, not long, as there will be in the former case a greater equality of heat. The roof should be from twenty inches to two feet high in the centre; the mouth no larger than will be sufficient to admit the bread. But many people who make their own bread send it to be baked at the baker’s. We have seen good ovens attached to a stove, and heated by the kitchen fire. These are not sufficiently capacious to contain loaves enough for the consumption of a large family, but they answer the purpose of a small family very well. To save room, it will be neces- sary, in stove ovens, to bake in tins. Bread thus baked is much more smooth and neat than when baked in the ordinary way; but the plea- sant crispness of the crust is wanting. The ovens used in London and some other large towns are, for the most part, heated by a furnace placed on one side. The heat in these ovens is very equable, and the baker is enabled to keep it up at all times with very little trouble, and with less expense than by the old method. FAMILY LOAF-BREAD. Under this head we shall give directions for making bread of wheat flour only. The manufacturing of barley flour, rye flour, and a mix- ture of different kinds of flours, with or without the addition of vari- ous other nutritive substances, &c., into bread, will be tr-eated of hereafter. Family or Home-Baked Bread.—An expeditions and simple method