Methods of making dough.

Methods of dough-making differ in different countries, and even in
different parts of the same land. In the _off hand_ method the dough is
made right off, without any preliminary stages of ferment or sponge.
This plan is sometimes adopted for making tin bread, and occasionally
for crusty loaves. For tin bread a strong flour would be used and made
into a slack dough, and about 1-1/2 lb. to 2 lb. of distillers' yeast
would be used for the sack (280 lb.) of flour, occasionally with the
addition of a little brewers' yeast. Salt is used in the proportion of 3
lb. to 3-1/2 lb. per sack. Formerly also it was the custom to add 10-14
lb. of boiled potatoes, but the use of potatoes has greatly decreased. A
tin-bread dough would be made slack, with about 70 quarts of water to
the sack, and after being mixed, would be fermented at a temperature of
76-80 deg. Fahr. It should lie for about ten hours. A dough for crusty
bread such as cottage loaves, would be made much tighter, not more than
60 quarts of water being allowed to the sack. It would be fermented at a
higher temperature, and would not lie more than about six hours. A slack
dough is much less laborious to work (when the dough is hand-made) than
a tight dough, for which a mechanical kneader is very suitable, but as a
matter of fact the use of machinery (see below) is still the exception,
not the rule. When a stiff dough is made by hand, it is usually made
somewhat slack to begin with, and then "cut back" and "dusted" at
regular intervals, that is to say, more and more flour is added till a
dough of the required consistency has been obtained. (In the British
baker's vocabulary "dust" means flour, and good dust stands for good
flour.) This system, on the one hand, saves the labour involved for
"sponging" and other operations, and the bread is produced in less time;
but on the other hand more yeast is used, and bakers generally hold that
the system sacrifices the colour and texture of the loaf to convenience
of working and yield. The high porportion of yeast enables the dough to
carry a large quantity of water, and about 104 4-lb. loaves to the sack
is said by Jago to be a not unusual yield in the case of slack doughs.
But such a result would only be possible with very strong flour. In an
ordinary way 96 loaves to the sack is a very high yield, unattainable
except with strong flour, and probably the average yield is not more
than 90 loaves to the sac