Paul Richards' book of breads, cakes, pastries, ices and sweetmeats

Machinery is being used more and more every day. Most all modern bakeries use dough mixers, dough dividing and molding machines, which lighten the heavy labor in baking. To regain the flavor of the malt and stock yeasts formerly used, progressive bakers who use compressed yeast add malt extract, malt sugar, or grape sugar in baking, and use potato flour in starch form in place of the potato ferment, to give moisture and flavor to the bread. Malt extract, also grape sugar, if added to the sponge, acts as a stimulant and ripens the sponge more rapidly, but loses some of the malt flavor during this process; therefore, if used as flavor, it is preferable to add it to the dough where more of the flavor is retained. The potato flour in starch form may be used in sponge and dough to keep the bread moist. Salt is used as a flavor, and also as a cheek on fermentation; it prevents the souring of the dough, and should be used more freely in summer than in winter. It has been demonstrated by practical bakers that it is best to add the lard used in baking, after all the flour is worked into the dough, which makes the dough finer of grain. The doughs should be well worked, and plenty of air beaten into it. This increases the proving qualities and gets it ready in a shorter time for the oven. THE PASTRY-ROOM IN THE HOTEL. The art of making bread and pastry consists of several distinct trades, and to be successful and become perfect in this art takes years of hard work and study. While outside of the hotel Breadmaking, Cakes and Pastry, Ice Cream Making, and also the Preserving of Fruit are special vocations, in the hotel they are combined into one business, and the work is often performed by one person. In the largest hotels the work is divided into several parts: a regular baker is employed for the bread baking, but under the supervision of the pastry cook, who is supposed to understand both branches. Besides the four different trades named above, the pastry cook must know how to prepare a variety of Hot and Cold Puddings, and is often asked to make Candies and prepare Ornamental Fancy Pieces for decorating the tables for special occasions. Baking and pastry work is more difficult to learn, and it requires a longer time than the meat cooking; and although the two branches of hotel work are closely affiliated to each other, the pastry work is not paid as well. I think this is one of the reasons why good pastry cooks are more scarce to-day than good meat cooks. Many a young baker or confectioner starts to work in the pastry room to learn the trade. He has probably been at his own trade for several years, and wants to learn pastry cooking. After some years of hard work he loses courage; he sees some other young fellow in the kitchen who started to learn the meat cooking at the same time he started in the pastry-room, and had no idea of cooking, getting away ahead of him, getting into better paying places, having a larger salary, and, often, even shorter hours of work, or more time off. The next chance this young man gets he leaves the pastry-room for the kitchen, or goes back to his first trade. Bread and pastry making requires to rise early in the morning to have the rolls ready for breakfast. And because the pastry is the last course of the dinner, the pastry cook is often, the last man in the kitchen, when all the other cooks are off duty. I have known several of the best pastry cooks who have quit the pastryroom for the kitchen, and who have become very good chefs in a short time. THE PASTRY-ROOM. A good pastry-room should consist of two parts adjoining each other: one, the warm part, with the oven in it; and a cool part, the pastryroom proper. Bread making requires a warm even temperature free from drafts.