I decided in 2012 I will try to do things we did years ago. Hopefully, I will get some readers interested in the good old days and bring back lots of memories.
I am going to try making bread from scratch. My cholesterol  will take a jump I am sure, especially if I have a piece of warm homemade bread with a piece of head cheese on it. Boy, my mouth is watering already.

It will be interesting to see if I can get all of the ingredients. I know I am not going to be able to get wheat flour. I remember way back when my grandmother and my mother would put their full body aprons on and mix up bread. Matter of fact, I can remember when we shocked the wheat bundles and threshed the grain with a steam engine and thresh machine. Those were the fun days. The grain was taken to one of the two mills in Chilton and ground up into bread flour.

I am hoping I will be able to get a cake of compressed yeast. Do you remember the blue and white package of compressed yeast?

We would soften the yeast in warm water, and then add the milk, sugar, salt and lard (yes, lard) and mix those things together in either a stainless steel or stone bowl with a large wooden spoon. Plastic was definitely not used then. I won't use it either, nor was a Mix Master or bread machine used.

When the mixture became too stiff to mix with the spoon, you started kneading it by hand as you added the balance of the mixture with the flour. You kneaded it long enough to make it smooth and satiny.

After shaping the dough into a ball, you put a towel over it and put it by the heat or in front of a window where the sun shined in on the dough. You let it rise until it was about double it's size and then you punched it down, kneaded it again, covered it and left it to rise till it was again double it's size, and kneaded again and left rise. Finally, it was put in greased pans and left to rise again.

When the bread was finished baking, you took it out of the oven. It was such a nice golden brown and the sides were bursting over the pan.

Some melted butter was spread over the hot bread with a pastry brush, and you could hear the snap, crackles and pop of the crust.

Doesn't this just make your mouth water? It does mine, and I am looking forward to making bread the old-fashioned way once. How about you getting a recipe and baking bread from scratch without a bread machine and Mix Master? While doing that I bet you will have many wonderful memories. Let's bring the good old days back and enjoy life a bit.

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