CHAPTER 5. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—REFUSAL TO PAY INCOME TAX 67
Reading of the bread-making at Mott St. and of Cobbetts old-fashioned way of bread making, and of Catherine de Heuck's rye bread encouraged me to persevere until I can now say that I make as good bread as I have ever tasted. Here is my method, developed at last after getting the yeast too hot, the oven too hot, and the dough raised too quickly. At noon I put 13 cups of whole wheat flour in a pan. Heat a pint of milk until it commences to bubble, then add water until it is a little more than luke warm. Crumble in 2 cakes of yeast and stir until dissolved. Add 2 tablespoons of salt and 4 of sugar to the liquid and pour liquid in the flour. Mix and add 4 tablespoons of shortening. Knead it a bit and add more water if necessary until it is not too sticky. I then put it in a pan, cover it with a cloth and take it over to Lipa's mother, Reyes, and leave it in her warm kitchen until 6 p.m. (If I left it in my room, Brother Mouse would nose around and perhaps get in the habit of searching for such good food—and my room is too cool for the dough to rise properly.)
At night I knead the dough lightly and make it into four loaves according to the size of pan I happen to have. (The Spanish word for bread is "pan".) I leave these loaves for about an hour and a half by the open oven door where a wood fire is burning. When the loaves have raised sufficiently I put them in the oven; but it must not be too hot or the outside will burn and the inside be doughy. In about 45 minutes the bread will be done. Shortening applied to the top of the loaf as it is removed from the oven keeps it from cracking. I place the loaves in a roomy and airy oven of another stove which is stored here and not in use, but is mouse proof. In the morning, half of a small loaf goes to Reyes and Lipa and half of a loaf to the growing son of my employer, who prefers it to store bread. A good slice is given as a token to Pat, the bookkeeper on the farm, who kindly brings my groceries from town, as she goes there often in her car.
I have been unable to purchase any buckwheat flour and make my own everlasting dough, added to each day during the winter months. The prepared stuff you buy is a travesty on the name of buckwheat. In winter I make hotcakes from flour, baking powder, salt and sugar and shortening. Have fried mush often for breakfast. When I am out of bread and do not have any yeast I can make fairly good tortillas. One day Lipa said that she had made two for me, but they are not nice and round like my mother's. (The saying among the Spanish people is that until a girl can make perfectly good, round tortillas, she is not ready to be married.)
A cup of flour, a teaspoon of salt and the same of baking powder and shortening, with enough milk or water added so the dough will not be sticky, will make three tortillas. Roll the dough out rather thin and place on top of the wood stove. Do not have the fire too hot. Keep turning from one side to another until light brown. Then put between the folds of a cloth. Spanish people break the tortilla in bits and dip up beans with it. I have learned to do this fairly well. One night last year when I had taken apples to Lipa I stayed for supper. Lipa jumped up from the table and rolled out a rather lop-sided tortilla and placed it on the stove. Chattering in her snappy English and Spanish, she forgot it and it was badly burned, With a nonchalant gesture she said, "That's o.k. Hennacy, take it along and eat it on your way home."
