Quick Breads

This is the oldest cook book I have. It's a bulletin of the Agricultural College Extension Office, The Ohio State University reprinted in June, 1940. The faded stamp on the cover is Elizabeth Wallrabenstein's signature. She was the Home Demonstration Agent for Oak Harbor, Ohio.



On page 5 there is this interesting illustration of balls of flour. The caption reads, "Fig. 1--Gluten balls from equal weights of flour: (a) bread flour; (b) family flour; (c) pastry flour; (d) cake flour.













Turn to page 8 and you'll see this picture of various types of egg beaters: (a) rotary type; (b) whisk type; (c) turbine type. I've yet to find the turbine type.















Here's how to form biscuits. Notice how perfect everything looks--there's no messy flour on the board, the dough circle is perfectly round and the biscuits are all consistent! I think the most important thing I've learned over the years is that my results are never, ever going to look like the one in the picture. If you can get over that fact you're well on your way to becoming a really good cook!


Biscuits: (a) Biscuit from lightly kneaded dough. Note symmetrical shape, smooth crust and large volume. (b) Biscuit from dough which has not been kneaded. Note small volume and coarser appearance. (c) Drop biscuit. Note irregular shape which is characteristic of this type of biscuit.

57 Year Old Bread

Funny, it doesn't taste that old! I found this recipe for "Oatmeal Molasses Bread" in Mrs. Gulau's stack of recipes that I "inherited" from Lene's Web. This one was published in the February, 1952 edition of "Household" magazine. It was folded and kept in a red Lustro-Ware recipe box along with many, many other bread recipes, most of which I didn't keep.

I replaced the 1/4 cup of molasses with honey and the shortening with butter. I added 1/8 cup of water to the recipe too, since it's very dry this time of year. The bread came out delicious! We enjoyed some warm slices with honey drizzled on them. Tasty!

I didn't follow the pictorial series of shenanigans used to form the loaves (below). My approach to loaf-forming is very straightforward. I let the bread maker mix and knead the dough. When the dough is finished proofing, I roll it out into a rectangle close to the recommended size, roll it up gently (not too tight) with my hands, tuck in the ends and place it in the loaf pans for the second rise. Easy!

And now that I've indulged in two slices of this wonderful, honeyed bread I'm afraid I'm going to have to order some clothes from Roaman's catalog for "stout women". Is that a nice way of saying "plump"? Roaman's is still in business today and caters to "plump" women. What I really want to know is why does Roaman's send me catalogs? (If you click the photo and enlarge it, you'll notice that the clothing sizes range from 38-52.)

Here are the loaf-forming shenanigans I referred to earlier, in case you wanted to know. Click to biggify.