The utensils needed for bread making are few, and generally of a simple kind. A range for cooking the potatoes for the ferment and heating the water. An enameled cast-iron pot to cook the potatoes. Two tubs, each twenty inches in diameter and thirty inches deep - one to prepare the yeast in, the other for the ferment. A pestle for crushing the potatoes used to prepare the ferment. A sieve (Fig. 97) to strain the hop water for preparing stock yeast and common yeast. A sieve (Fig. 96) for sifting the flour. A strainer for straining the ferment. A poker or long iron hook, when the oven is heated by wood, to remove the embers. This is not used in the modern ovens heated with coal. A tub or pail to be filled with water into which the mop used for cleaning the oven is plunged. A swab or long stick on the end of which a heavy cloth or mop is attached. A dipper or tin vessel with a handle, generally holding about two quarts; it is used for measuring the water, yeast and ferment. A scraper or polished iron plate, four inches long by five and a half inches wide, with a handle; this is used to remove the dough adhering to the sides of the kneading trough; it is also used for cutting the dough into pieces.

Square wooden boxes, measuring thirty inches wide by thirty-two inches long and four and a half inches deep in the inside. It is in these boxes, either simply dredged over with flour or else covered with a layer of coarse linen, that the dough rests after being cut up in all the operations succeeding the molding, Long and narrow wooden crown boxes, measuring in the inside sixteen inches wide by four feet ten inches long and three and a quarter inches deep. It is in these boxes, after they are covered with a layer of coarse linen, that the crowns are placed and left until ready to put in the oven. Long strips of coarse linen in proportionate width to the boxes they are intended for. These strips are laid in the boxes, and on these the bread rests until ready to be baked. Two hard wood rolling-pins, one three feet long and an inch and three-quarters in diameter; the other two feet long and five-eighths of an inch in diameter. The longest one is used to split the crowns, and the shortest to split the rolls. Two small hard wood boards, four inches long by thirty inches wide and half an inch thick on one end, then sloping down to scarcely nothing on the other, on the long side of the board.

Cover one of these with thin flannel, to be used to remove jockos from the piece of linen, to place them on the peel, when sufficiently raised to be put in the oven; the other one remains uncovered and is used for raising the rolls from the linen when ready to cook. A round board half an inch thick and fifteen inches in diameter, furnished with a handle; the crowns are inverted from the linen on this to transport to the peel, just when ready to place in the oven. Wooden and iron peels and a shovel, one five inches wide by forty-one inches long. It is used for putting the jockos into the oven. Another of the same length and twenty inches wide is used to put all the small rolls and crowns in the oven, also to take them out, as well as the jockos. A third iron peel, seven by ten inches in length, is used for putting in and removing the molded loaves and those on tins. A shovel for coal, to be wide and quite deep. Baking pans of Russian sheet-iron with high sides, sixteen inches long by eight inches wide and three and a half inches deep. These pans are used for American two-pound loaves. Others, measuring twenty-four by nineteen inches wide, are intended for sweet rolls and muffins.

Sheet-iron molds with hinged covers of two different sizes, one containing seven pounds of dough as in Fig. 610, for loaves intended for sandwiches and crusts; the other containing twelve pounds of dough, these loaves to be used for large croustades, supports and bread-crumbs. Fig. 610 mold contains seven pounds, and is twenty inches long by five and a half wide, and five inches deep; at the bottom it is a quarter of an inch shorter and a quarter of an inch narrower than at the top. The other mold must be thirteen inches long by nine inches wide, and at the bottom a quarter of an inch shorter and a quarter of an inch narrower than at the top; that is, twelve and three-quarters by eight and three-quarters inches. The depth should be nine inches. A kneading trough, a large wooden case, generally thirty inches wide at the top and twenty-two inches at the bottom, twenty inches deep and eight feet long.

(3405). Bread Making (Fabrication Du Pain)

Although bread is considered a plain, simple food, yet it plays a very important part on the table and in the kitchen work. The preparation it requires in the kitchen, and the labor it demands, are almost innumerable, therefore I consider it necessary to give a few suggestions as to the manner of manipulating. These suggestions, of course, are only meant as a guide for the skilled practitioner, for to obtain perfect success in bread making requires both the experience and judgment of the workman, and he should always take in consideration, while performing his task, all that stands in relation to bis work: The season, the weather, the temperature, the quality of the flour employed and its strength, the different kinds of flour entering into the mixture, the preparation of the dough, yeasts and ferment, the size of the bread, the quantity of either the first or second batch, the nature of the combustible for heating the oven and its capacity. All these are most useful points to study and to remember, but can only be learned by practice, from whence experi- ence arises.

Both the judgment and tact must be utilized if success in bread making be desired.