Bread Ah Smell that Aroma
Make it from scratch
Gram never used a recipe which made it hard to keep track of how she really did it. Of course, if you had to make 4 loaves every single day, you probably wouldn't need a recipe.
She mixed her liquid in a five gallon bucket. She would bring up the flour from the cellar in another bucket and combine it with the liquid bucket until it was dry enough to turn out in the middle of the kitchen table. She had a flour sack laying on top of her table sprinkled with flour. She would throw more flour on the lump of dough and knead it vigorously. She would let it rise right there on the table.
She would bake five loaves at a time in the oven. Sometimes the last pans would have risen more, waiting their turn to go into the oven, and she would have to punch them down again.
So what if one loaf burned a little on the bottom. She just sliced that off and away it would go, maybe to the geese. I know that not much of anything was ever thrown away.
Keeping the bread, didn't seem to be a problem. It didn't last that long.
Her recipe went something like this, when it was spring and the milk and eggs were readily available.
Warm a gallon of skim milk on the stove and combine with 1 1/4 gallon whole milk, usually fresh from the cows. She would pour in half a gallon thick cream. (She said it was just as good as adding butter) 1 cup of honey gathered from her hive. (eat your heart out Martha Stewart) and 3 dozen eggs. (no kidding) 4 Tablespoons dry yeast, stirring this and adding flour.Eventually 40 to 45 pounds of flour went into it, I am not sure exactly how much. When it got to be too much for the bucket, it was poured out onto the kitchen table and worked there. This could be a 6 hour job. This recipe produced 12 loaves of bread and 12 pans of rolls.
She used the kitchen table, because her kitchen didn't have counter tops. She was a short stout woman, and I think the table was a good height for her to work.
She seemed to know intuitively what would go with what. Something that a beginning baker did not know, adding so much flour that the dough got so hard they just couldn't knead it any more.
Starter
Mix a cup of flour with a cup of water. Add 1 teaspoon sugar. Leave it covered with a light cloth in a warm place. As soon as it starts to "boil" that is, ferment, it is ready to use in bread. The more you use the better your bread will turn out. Use flour and water to refill your starter jar.
Sometimes milk was used instead of water. Milk was unpasteurized in those days. It had a sour smell
Cooking with sourdough starter usually began with a sponge made the night before. A typical sponge would be made by putting a cup of your starter into a bowl with 2 cups of water water and 2 1/2 cups of flour. Mix well and rest in a warm place overnight. In the morning before proceeding with your recipe put one cup of sponge back into your starter jar.
