Morning journal and courier., 1888-10-08
BAKING ORAOKERs.
How They Are Made by Wholesale
 Also Some Fancy Cakes.

How They Are Made by Wholesale
 Also Some Fancy Cakes.
 The first step in the manufacture of crack CTS, which is by far the most extensive branch of the steam baking business, is to mix the dough, says the Baltimore Herald. A half barrel or so of flour is dumped into wooden vat and lard, yeast, salt and possibly one or two other ingredients to vary the grade of the manufactured pros duct, are mixed with the mass. Several buckets of water are thrown in, and 8 white aproned kneader, with 8 square can- vas bakers cap on his head, rolls up his sleeves to the armpits and pitches in. When he has agitsted the mass sufficiently it is allowed to stand over night and ftrise." Not only one, but a number of vats are filled with embryonic crackers and left to ferment in the same way.
 In the morning the hands come to work at eight o'clock and begin the task of the day. The dough is exhumed in masses from the depths of the receptacles and flung down a chute to flower floor. The dough presser, machine whose name ex- plains it's use, absorbs the sticky mass into it's great iron jaws and rolls it out into cakes about an inch thick by forcing it through an elongated aperture of the required diameter. It is now ready for the cutter, which ma- l chine divides the dough into squares of pro- per dimensions ready for baking.
 The process of division is very simple. A presses it to the proper thickness and runs it under @ stamper worked by steam. The stamper outs the Hat cake into squares and dents the surface with number of little de- pressions. The firm name of the proprietors | of the factory is also stamped upon the top. I run along the margin of the batch are re- moved by the hands of two small boys whe ! occupy seats by the machine.
 The next process is to shovel it into the oven. The reel oven is the variety most 1 used for baking crackers, which are consid- | cred 8 comparatively coarse product. An immense pair of wheels connected by trans verse bars of iron are suspended over 8 seeth- ing brick furnace in such manner as to be easily revolved by the hand of an operator. A number of huge flat sheets of iron are suspended from the transverse rods some what after the fashion of 8 scale pan hang ing from beams end. One of the sheets is kept constantly at the mouth of the aperture in the side of the oven where the unbaked crackers are to be put in for baking. An operator with a large, thin wooden shovel runs the flat blade under section of the cut and pressed dough, and placing it upon the iron sheet, suddenly withdraKs it. This process is repeated until the sheet is filled, when turn of tIe wheel shoots it out over the heated coals in the furnace, and at the same time brings the next sheet, whose freight has been cooking for some time and is now entirely done before the mouth of the orihce. A huge wooden rake, operated by hand, pulls the crackers off into the baskets, where the force of the fall breaks the thin strips of brittle bread which bind them to- gether, and they are full fedged, ready baked crackers.
 If the crackers were packed into boxes inn mediately after being raked from the oven they would 'sweat" and retain an enlarged thickness given them by the excessive heat. So they are dumped upon large, fiat counters to dry before they are put into the labeled boxes or barrels in which they are sold. This is the usual process employed in the manufacture of crackers. In some of the cooled into troughs with sliding bottoms, which empty them into chutes by which they are conveyed up or down stairs. Nearly all of the reel ovens have the same capacity. Twelve flat sheets is the usual complement, and each sheet is just large enough to con- tain six rows of seyenty-two crackers each. Each row is Q spadeful. Each oven, there fore, contains one thousand five hundred and eighty-four crackers baking at one time. The large houses have from three to five ovens. If these ovens are operated the num- Der baking at one time would be five thou sand seven hundred and ffty-two.
 The finest grades of cakes, such as macca- rooms, citron, cream and jelly rolls, are too delicate to be trusted always to reel ovens, and in many factories are baked in the old fashioned Dutch affairs, which impart such delicious flavor to the cooking of our grand- mothers. The methods of preparing these cakes differ wicely Chocolate icing is put on by dropping the cake upon it's flat surface into bucket of liquid chocolate, and scrap- ing of the surplus from the edges with @ knife. Stampers of proper design will inn print upon dough almost any variety of de- vice. Horse cakes, So dear to the heart of the rural urchin, are cut out in large num- bers from molasses dough by number of stamps operated at once. The devices re- sorted to in the manufacture of the almost numberless grades of cakes and crackers which are turned out by a first class factory are of endless variety.