Bread-Making Day with Grandma

Grandma’s Schedule included a Bread-Making Day

Grandpa and Grandma purchased a ranch in the early 1900s in a remote area in Southern Utah. They moved into a small cabin with their baby boy and eventually had 15 children. As the middle child, my mother remembered her mother’s weekly schedule, especially the bread-making day with my grandma.

The weekly schedule consisted of focusing on one thing a day along with her daily duties. Monday, she did laundry one and it took all day. Tuesday, she ironed the clothes. Wednesday was the bread-making day for Grandma. She baked bread, rolls, pies, or cakes for special occasions. She used a wood-burning stove and could tell the correct oven temperature with her hand. Thursday she sewed and mended clothes, but she often mended in the evenings as well. Friday, she focused on the garden. Saturday, she cleaned the house from top to bottom.

Bread-Making Day

Grandma and Grandpa owned a small general store, but it carried limited items. Sliced bread was not available, so women baked their own bread every week. On Grandma’s bread-making day, she baked 8 to 12 loaves of bread each bread-making day. If all the children were home, she baked twice a week. Sometimes, she ran out of yeast. However, she couldn’t just run to the store. Yeast was not always available in small towns. Before World War II, granulated yeast had not been invented. My mother remembers many times her mother sent her to a neighbor’s house with a small bottle to borrow a start of yeast. Although this was not a sourdough start that some women in town used, it was similar. A start of yeast grew similar to a start of sourdough.

Grandma’s bread used a Yeast Start

Each week, Grandma mixed most of the bottle of yeast into the bread to make the dough. To replenish her start, she always saved some of the start to grow for the next week. She added water, flour, and bits of dough to the remaining start, and then, she sat it at the back of the old wood-burning cookstove where it grew. If it didn’t grow enough, she borrowed more, if she had extra, she shared. Sometimes, a young neighbor girl came to her house to ask for a “start” to take home to her mother. The women shared and helped each other.

Grandma’s original bread recipe read something like this:

3 heaping spoonsful of sugar

2 heaping spoonsful of yeast

1 heaping spoonful of salt

Solid Lard about the size of an egg

Mix the yeast in about a cup of warm water with the sugar.

Scold the big pan full of milk. If possible, use butter milk.

Put scolded milk in the bread bowl. Dissolve the lard in the milk. Let the milk cool before adding the yeast. Add the yeast, and then enough flour to make dough stiff enough to knead. Knead until it is smooth. Rest 5 minutes. Knead again. Rise once until double in size and knead down. Rise again and then mold into loaves. Makes 8 loaves of bread or more. Bake 1 hour at 350 degrees.

Are you ready to make it like Grandma did?

Use Grandma’s recipe in you bread-making day

Grandma used specific spoons and pans to make her bread, so my mother took those utensils and measured out the ingredients, translating the recipe into modern language. and modern utinsils. Therefore, the recipe becomes easy to make and easy to recreate a Bread-Making Day with Grandma. If you make the full recipe, you can freeze extra loaves and thaw them out later. But, let me warn you, the bread will not be very good if you forget to add the salt, as I have done on occasion.

Grandma’s White Bread:

3 heaping tbsps. of sugar

2 tbsps. of yeast (or 2 yeast packets)

1 heaping tbsp. of salt

2 quarts milk (if you use raw milk, scald the milk and cool it before adding the yeast)

Solid Lard about the size of an egg… (Mom left this one alone. I use Lard if I have it or shortening.)

Dissolve the yeast in about a cup of warm water with the sugar.

Add 2 quarts of milk in the bread bowl, if possible, use butter milk. Dissolve the lard in a pan and add to the milk. Add the yeast, and slowly add enough flour to make dough stiff enough to knead. Knead until it is smooth. Rest 5 minutes. Knead again. Rise once until double in size and knead down. Rise again and then mold into loaves. Makes 8 loaves of bread or more. Bake 1 hour at 350 degrees.

Making Bread in Remote Country Life

Grandma and Mom used scolded milk because they milked cows and used raw milk. When I make this recipe, I use either 2 quarts of regular milk, (whole, 2%) or I sometimes use powdered milk and powdered buttermilk mixed with 2 quarts of water. I half the recipe when I use my KitchenAid mixer because my bowl won’t hold more than 1 quart of water will make. I’ve used white flour, or I’ve added a cup or so of whole wheat and a handful of oatmeal. I just add the flour until I can turn the dough out on my counter and knead it a little. Grandma had a system that worked for her while living in the remote part of the country.

Grandma’s bread-making supplies

In the winter, getting to a store took all day. When Grandpa built the house, he built a storage place on the back porch to hold flour consisting of four shelves about four feet wide and three feet deep. Before winter closed the mountain road north of town, Grandpa drove a team to the store about 100 miles away. He picked up enough bags of flour to fill the shelves, along with other items needed for winter. Also, Grandma used a flour bin located in the middle of her bottom cupboards. It was a door that swung outward with a metal bin attached to it. This held a couple of bags of flour, making it handy to get flour for cooking. A dish towel made from a flour sack covered the opening. A breadboard above the bin pulled out making cutting the bread easy.

When my mother made bread on her bread-making day, my siblings and I waited anxiously to be the first to eat a hot piece of bread. Yes, often we tore the loaf to pieces. Consequently, I wonder what bread-making day with Grandma looked like?