Pastry For Two Crusts

1 1/4 cups pastry flour

1/2 teaspoon baking-powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/3 or 1/2 cup butter or lard

Water

Mix and sift the dry ingredients together; cut the butter or lard in with a fork. Add enough water to make a paste barely moist enough to hold together, using a knife and cutting through the dough to mix it. Roll half of it with as little pressure of the rolling-pin as possible, until it is about one-eighth of an inch thick. If a two-crust pie is to be made, lay this crust on the inside of an unbuttered pie plate, trim the edge, and put the trimmings with the remaining paste and roll it out for the upper crust. If a single under crust is to be used, as for lemon pie, lay the paste on the outside of a pie plate, trim the edge and prick through the crust in several places. Bake it for about fifteen minutes in a moderate insulated oven, with the pie plate upside down in the oven. Remove the baked crust and fill it.

Bread

1 pt. water or milk

1 tablespoon butter or lard

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons sugar

1/4 cake compressed or 1/2 cake dry yeast and 1/2 cup warm water, or 1/2 cup liquid yeast

Flour to make a dough

Soak the yeast for a few minutes in the half cupful of warm water. Scald the milk or boil the water, add the fat, let it cool till lukewarm, then add the remaining ingredients, except the flour. If compressed yeast is used, add as much flour as is needed to make a dough that may be kneaded. If dry yeast or liquid yeast is used, add only one and one-half pints of flour; beat the mixture well, and let it rise till full of bubbles, usually over night; then add the remaining flour. The rest of the process is the same, no matter what yeast is used. Knead the dough until it is smooth and elastic, return it to the bowl, set it in a warm place to rise until it has doubled in size. Knead it again until all large bubbles are pressed out, mould it into two loaves, put it into greased pans and let it again rise until it has doubled in size. Heat the insulated oven stones until the paper test, given on page 225, shows a golden brown. Put the bread in and bake it from fifty minutes to one hour. If two stones will not make a hot oven for a large amount of bread to be baked, use hot flatirons or stove lids to supplement them.

Rolls

Add one tablespoon of butter to the recipe for bread, or knead the butter into the dough just before moulding it. Shape it into rolls, put them into a buttered pan, and when risen to a little more than double their size, bake them for twenty minutes in an insulated oven with stones that will turn the paper a rich brown, as explained in the test on page 225.

Baking Powder Biscuits

4 teaspoons baking-powder, or 1 teaspoon soda and two teaspoons cream of tartar

1 pt. flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons butter or lard

3/4 to 1 cup milk or water

Mix and sift the dry ingredients, work in the fat with the fingers, or mash it in with a fork.

Add the liquid, one-third at a time, mixing the dough in three separate portions in the bowl. Cut through these three masses until they are barely mixed, then roll the dough to about one-half inch thickness; cut it into biscuits, lay them on a greased pan, brush the tops with milk or melted butter, and bake them for fifteen or twenty minutes in an insulated oven with stones heated so as to turn the paper a rich, dark brown, as explained in the test on page 225.