“Jerold, the woodbox is empty.”
Hearing this call from my mother is one of my earliest memories, for beginning when I was about three years old, one of my chores was to keep the woodbox near the kitchen stove filled, in all months of the year. When I had other, more important things to do, such as playing with the little barn and toy animals I’d gotten for Christmas or paging through the Uncle Wiggily book that my mother read to me at bedtime, she often called for more wood.
A woodshed, an extension on the west side of the kitchen, held the stovewood that Pa had split and stacked. It was mostly dried oak, with a little pinewood that Pa called kindlin.’ The oak he had cut from the woodlot north of our farmhouse, the pine from a dead tree in the windbreak west of the buildings. Filling the woodbox was not an especially difficult task. I merely had to trot through the kitchen, open the door to the woodshed, gather up an armful of wood, return to the kitchen, and dump it in the woodbox standing to the left of the cookstove.
“Be careful you don’t make a mess,” Ma would say, meaning she didn’t want me to drop a stick of wood on the kitchen floor and stir up a bunch of dust.
Every day of the year, Pa started the cookstove before going out to the barn for the morning milking. Ma kept the stove going all day, until we all went to bed around nine every evening. I kept the woodbox filled until my brothers were old enough to take over the task and I moved to higher-level chores, such as helping with the milking and other barn chores.
Ma used the cookstove to do all the cooking, baking, and canning, plus heating water for washday and our Saturday night baths. The oven did not have a thermometer, but Ma knew just by opening the door and holding her hand inside for a moment if the oven was at the proper temperature for whatever she was baking. She adjusted the temperature by the type and amount of wood she put in the stove’s firebox. (Oak wood gives off more heat and holds it longer than pine wood, for instance.) To know if the top of the stove was hot enough to fry eggs or potatoes, she would drop a little cold water on the stove’s lid; if the water sizzled and bounced, it was hot enough. Cooking and baking with a wood-burning cookstove was an art, one my mother mastered.
I have wonderful memories of not just the comforting heat that came from our old stove but also the aromas of baking bread, ham cooking with sauerkraut, and thick-sliced bacon sizzling on a cold winter morning. Ma baked a half dozen loaves of bread a week. (We never purchased bread from the store. Pa said bakers’ bread, as he called it, “had no power in it.”)
WOOD FOR WOODSTOVE COOKING
For those who have access to a woodlot, the best kind of wood is that which is readily available. But different types of wood have different qualities, and the best wood for woodstove cooking, in order of heating value, are hickory, white oak, black oak, birch, and black locust.
Soft white and red pine, especially when cut into small, thin pieces for kindling, are good for starting a fire because they burn fast. Harder woods, especially the oaks, are better choices for cooking because they burn more slowly.
Although I have plenty of black locust available on my farm, I generally avoid burning it because of the smell of its smoke. Locust is a legume, and when it burns it gives off a rather foul odor. I prefer the sweet smell of oak, hickory, and birch smoke.
I also cure the wood for at least a year before burning it. Freshly cut wood can contain up to 50 percent moisture. After several months of curing (sitting covered in a dry spot), the wood’s moisture level drops to 25 percent or lower. Some moisture in wood is a good thing, though; if wood is allowed to dry for several years, it tends to burn too quickly and won’t maintain the heat necessary for woodstove cooking.
Ma’s strawberry sweet rolls, with homemade strawberry jam baked into them, were special Sunday morning treats. And about once a month, more often in winter, Ma fried up a batch of doughnuts in a big kettle of oil, including the little round doughnut holes, all of them coated with sugar and prized by my brothers and me.
WOODSTOVE POPCORN
Every so often on a cold winter night, Ma would announce that it was a good night for popcorn. As the snow fell and the wind howled, sometimes sending a little puff of wood smoke into the kitchen, we stoked up the fire so it would be good and hot, which made popping corn quite easy.
Ma took out one of her big cooking pots, one with a handle and a cover. She cut a slice of butter into the pot and put it on the stove. When the butter was melted, she dropped in a small handful of popcorn. We’d take turns jiggling the pot back and forth on the hot stove, waiting for the first kernel to pop and then the explosion of kernels all popping at once with the wonderful smell of popped corn and melted butter oozing from under the cover of the cook pot and filling the kitchen. When the popping lessened, someone (usually Ma) had to decide when it was time to remove the pot from the stove. Leave the pot on the stove too long and you risked burning some of the popcorn; take it off too soon and you might have a cluster of “old maids,” or unpopped corn. After removing the pot from the stove, Ma dumped the freshly popped corn into a big bowl, sprinkled on a little salt, and we dove in. What a wonderful treat it was.
8–9 cups all-purpose flour, divided
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 packages (¼ ounce each) active dry yeast (can also make this using cake yeast; see note below)
1½ cups milk
½ cup water
1 cup butter
2 eggs
In a large bowl, combine 2 cups of the flour, sugar, salt, and yeast.
Heat milk, water, and butter in a medium saucepan over low heat until very warm—about 120–130 degrees.
Slowly pour milk mixture into flour mixture. Mix until blended, scraping the sides of the bowl. Stir in about 4⅓ cups of the remaining flour, enough to make a smooth, soft dough. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, 8 to 10 minutes. Shape the dough into a ball and place in a large greased bowl. Turn the dough greased side up. Cover with a towel and place the bowl in a warm place. Let rest until the dough is doubled in size, 1 to 1½ hours. The dough is ready if an indentation remains when the dough is touched.
Punch down the dough. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface.
TO MAKE BASIC SWEET DOUGH USING CAKE YEAST:
Use one 2-ounce cake of yeast and decrease the total liquid in the recipe by ½ cup to adjust for the liquid used to dissolve the yeast. Dissolve 1 teaspoon sugar in ½ cup milk heated to 90–95 degrees. Add crumbled cake yeast to sugar solution. Stir until completely dissolved. Let mixture sit 5 to 10 minutes until the yeast begins to bubble. Add yeast mixture to the remaining ingredients.
1 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
Basic Sweet Dough (recipe on previous page)
½ cup butter, melted
Mix the brown sugar and cinnamon.
Roll half of Basic Sweet Dough into a 12 × 18-inch rectangle. Spread with half of the butter and sprinkle with half of the brown sugar and cinnamon mixture. Starting at the long (18-inch) side, roll up dough tightly. Pinch the edge of the dough into the roll to seal well. Repeat with the other half of the dough and remaining filling.
Use kitchen string to cut the dough into 1- to 1½-inch-thick slices: slide the string under the roll and pull it up toward you, crossing the strings, to “cut” the dough. Grease a 9-inch square or 8-inch round pan. Place rolls slightly apart in pan. Cover with a towel and set in a warm place. Let rise until doubled in size, about 40 minutes.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Bake until golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes.
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon butter
1 egg
3 egg yolks
½ cup milk
½ cup cream
½ teaspoon nutmeg
4 cups flour
5 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
Vegetable oil for frying
Powdered sugar for dusting
Cream sugar and butter together in a large bowl. Beat in egg, then beat in the egg yolks one at a time. Stir in the milk gradually, then the cream and the nutmeg. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda. Stir dry mixture into the sugar mixture, blending well.
Fill a large pan with vegetable oil to 2 to 3 inches deep. Heat to 375 degrees.
Roll the dough onto lightly floured pastry cloth, rolling it around to coat it with flour. Roll out gently to ⅜-inch thick with a rolling pin. Cut out the doughnuts with a floured doughnut cutter. Lift them out of the rolled dough with a wide spatula to keep the shape. Slide the doughnuts into hot oil and fry until golden brown, 2 to 3 minutes. (The doughnut holes are fried up the same as the doughnuts. They fry up round.) Turn doughnuts as soon as they rise to the surface. Drain on a paper-towel-lined tray. Dust with powdered sugar.
2 cups milk
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon lard or shortening
2 teaspoons salt
1 package (¼ ounce) active dry yeast
¼ cup warm water (110 to 115 degrees)
6–7 cups flour, divided
Melted butter for tops of loaves
Scald the milk (heat it to 82 degrees) until small bubbles begin to form around the edges. Stir in the sugar, lard, and salt. Put in a large bowl and let cool to lukewarm.
In another bowl, sprinkle yeast over warm water and stir to mix and dissolve. When the yeast is dissolved, add it to the milk mixture. Add 3 cups of the flour and mix with a wooden spoon until the batter is smooth.
Add remaining flour, a little at a time, until you have a dough that holds together and pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured board. Cover with a cloth and let rest for 10 minutes.
Knead the dough with floured hands until it is smooth and elastic, 8 to 10 minutes. To knead, fold the dough toward you and then push it away with the heels of your hands in a rocking motion. Turn the dough a quarter turn. Repeat the pushing motion with both of your hands. Round up the ball of dough and put it into a lightly greased bowl. Then turn the dough over so there is grease on the top. Cover and let the dough rise in a warm place until it is doubled in size, about 1 to 1½ hours.
Punch the dough down: push your fist into the center of the dough ball, releasing air bubbles from the dough. Cover the dough and let rise again until almost doubled in size, about 45 minutes.
Turn the dough onto the floured board and shape into a ball. Divide the dough in half, shape into 2 loaves, and place in 2 greased loaf pans. Cover and let rise in the pans until doubled in size, about 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Bake bread until deep, golden brown, about 35 minutes. Brush tops with melted butter. Remove pans from oven and place on wire racks to cool.
