1911: Royal Baker and Pastry Cook, A Manual of Practical Receipts for Home Baking and Cooking
Royal Baking Powder, New York
…In receipts calling for one teaspoonful of soda and two of cream of tartar, use two spoonfuls of Royal, and leave the cream of tartar and soda out. You get the better food and save much trouble and guess work.
Look out for alum baking powders. Do not permit them to come into your house under any consideration. They add an injurious substance to your food, destroying in part its digestibility. Physicians will tell you this, and it is unquestionable….
There are three entirely different kinds of ingredients used in making the three different varieties of baking powders on the market, viz.–
- Mineral Acid, or Alum, is made from sulphuric acid and bauxite, a kind of clay…
- Bone-Acid, or Phosplate…
- Cream of Tartar exists in all ripe grapes, and flows with the juice when the grapes are pressed. The tartar is subsequently gathered from the cask, boiled with water, and refined, when crystals of Cream of Tartar, white and very pure, separate and are procured…. Royal is the only baking powder made from Royal grape cream of tartar…it perfectly aerates and leavens the batter or dough, and makes the food finer in appearance, more delicious to the taste, and more healthful. It possesses the greatest practicable leavening strength, never fails in quality, and will keep fresh and perfect in all climates until used.
Hints on Baking
….Some flour requires more water, or milk, than others; so that the quantity may require to be varied for dough of a proper consistency. To ascertain whether the bread is sufficiently done in the center of the loaf or cake, thrust a clean straw or long thin splinter into it. If done, there will be no dough on it when drawn out. Measure the flour, and be careful to mix with it the baking powder in a dry state, and before sifting. You can always substitute water for milk, or milk for water; butter for lard, or lard for butter. The number of eggs may be increased or diminished, or, in plainer cake, etc., dispensed with entirely. Where fewer eggs are used than directed, always use a little more baking powder. Never use sour milk. When flour and liquid are to be mixed, always stir liquid gradually into the flour–to add flour to liquid usually means lumps, especially for an inexperienced cook.
When about to cut new bread or cake, heat the knife very hot; this will prevent its crumbling.
Cake Baking
…On no account should an oven be too hot when the cake is put in–that is, hot enough to brown at once; if so, in 5 minutes the whole outside will be burned and the interior will stand little chance of being baked. The old plan of feeling the handle of the oven door to test the heat is not always successful; it is better to sprinkle a little flour inside and shut the door for about three minutes; if at the end of that time it is of a rich light brown, the cake may be put in, but if burned the heat must be lessened.
In baking loaf cake, remember that unless you place a piece of paper over for protection at first, a top crust will be formed at once that prevents the raising. When cake is will raised, remove the paper for browning on top.
Fancy-Cake makers and confectioners prefer to use “pastry” flour for the making of cakes and pastry, which is a flour of different grade from that used for bread and general baking purposes. Bread flour contains a large proportion of gluten, the nitrogenous property of the wheat grain, which gives bone and muscle, and makes bread a nutritious food. When bread flour is used for cake and pie crust the result is not quite as flaky and light as it should be, because of the gluten in the flour. A special sack of pastry flour for use in making fine cakes and pastry will be advantageous. In appearance pastry flour is whiter than bread flour. When rubbed between the fingers it feels as soft and fine as corn-starch; if squeezed in the hand it forms a firm ball. Because of this tendency to “pack” it should always be sifted very thoroughly….
Bread and Rolls
Bread was first made without leaven, heavy and solid. Then yeast was discovered… Finally baking powder was devised…
Yeast is a living plant. Mixed with the dough it causes fermentation and destruction of a part of the flour, and this produces carbonic-acid gas. The bubbles of this gas become entangled in the dough, swelling it up and making it spongy. In this process, however, a part of the most nutritious elements of the flour (estimated at ten percent.) is destroyed in producing the leavening gas; there is always danger of sour dough, and there is a delay of many hours for the sponge to rise.
…Royal Baking Powder is now largely used in place of yeast to leaven bread. It does precisely the same work–that is, swells up the dough and makes it porous and spongy….there is no mixing or kneading with the hands, no setting of sponge overnight, as the loaf is mixed and ready for the oven at once. Bread thus made cannot sour, but will retain its moisture and freshness, and may be eaten while hot or fresh without distress even by persons of delicate digestion.
Spider Corn Bread
Beat 2 eggs with 2 tablespoons sugar. Add 1 pint milk, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 1/3 cup Indian corn meal, 1/3 cup flour, 1 teaspoon Royal Baking Powder; In a spider melt 2 tablespoons butter; turn so as to grease sides. Pour in batter, add 1 cup milk, but do not stir. Bake about 30 minutes in hot oven. When done it should have a steak of custard through the middle.
Waffles
The very word “waffles” brings to our minds a host of pleasant recollections. The only drawback, in the old days, was that they must be started so long before they were ready for the irons, for home-made yeast took time to raise the batter to the requisite degree of lightness. Now, by the use of Royal Baking Powder, they can be prepared in five minutes….
Sift together 1 quart flour, 1/3 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon sugar, 2 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder. Rub in 1/3 cup butter. Add 3 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately, and sufficient milk to make a thin batter. Cook in hot greased waffle-iron.
Griddle Cakes, Etc.
..The heavy, sour, grease-soaked, indigestible griddle cake of old is, where modern methods are employee, a thing of the past….Raising the griddle cake with yeast is altogether obsolete with expert cooks. Mixtures of soda, saleratus, sour milk, buttermilk, etc., are likewise not permissible. Royal Baking Powder has altogether redeemed the griddle cake….The griddle must be merely rubbed with grease, not grease-soaked.
44-numbered pages.
