RICE BREAD.
(The Rectory Receipt.)
I am indebted for the following receipt to an admirable housekeeper,—the wife of a country clergyman,—in whose own words I present it to the reader. It is given with so much exactness in all its details, that I have not considered it needful to have it tested before inserting it here, especially as it is the result of positive and long experience.
“We have been for some time in the habit of using a portion of rice for our bread. We commenced this plan when flour was very dear; and we think the bread so much improved by the addition, that now we seldom omit it. We generally bake two stone (that is to say, four gallons, or twenty-eight pounds) of flour; and for this quantity we allow two pounds of rice. We first wash the rice, and then soak it for three or four hours in six pints of water. It is next turned, with the whole of the water, into a large tin dish with a cover (a Nottingham jar well tied down would be a good substitute for this), and put it into a tolerably hot oven for two hours, when it will be nicely swollen, and will have absorbed all the water. When it has cooled down sufficiently to be handled easily, we rub it into half the flour, in the same way that we should rub butter or lard into it for pastry, and proceed to make the bread. If we can procure good home-brewed yeast, we prefer it to any other, and find a quarter of a pint sufficient for our baking; but we very frequently use baker's yeast, which we find we can depend on better than on the brewer's. It is a thin liquid, somewhat resembling beer, of which we are obliged to mix three quarters of a pint with the dough. We add first to the flour and rice two small handfuls of salt, and then wet them up gradually with ten pints of warm water, reserving the yeast until they are tolerably well moistened, when we pour it equally over the mass, and beat it in well with the hand, and knead it about. This dough will be very lithe. We make it about four o'clock