Baking Bread

Good evening all,
It's funny/strange how things spoken, written or visual can trigger
memories of things past and gone. Such was the case with Diana's bread
recipe.............it brought back memories of my mom and of the bread
that she mixed and baked in her lifetime.

Mom was a cook, not a spectacular achievement for an shore born
woman of her generation; she was at times cook in lumber camps, lobster
factories and highway construction camps. There, labouring under the
most primitive conditions, with no hydro at some camps, no mechanical
aids (mixers, peelers, etc.,) I have seen her cook for as high as
sixty-five men. Three meals per day, seven days a week, although, given
the chance some workers would go home on Sunday.

Fifty-four years ago she and my dad, who was cookee, was employed by
A.T. Logan, the long time mayor of Trenton, N.S.. A.T. was a lumbering
contractor of magnum proportions, both physically, for he was a gaint of
a man, and in the size of his operations. In earlier years he and a
gentleman by the name of Garbeson, a New Brunswicker, were partners;
then A.T. went it on his own. His operations were in the Cameron
Settlement, Caledonia, Trafalgar area, and before our woods were raped
by the pulp companies, abetted by governments, the timber in those
areas was a sustainable resource, that supported Logan and several other
major contractors for decades.

The cook house at the camp where my parents worked was on the Rocky
Lake Road which ran south from Cameron Settlement. It would be probably
fifty feet in length by twenty five feet in width. It was built from
rough lumber, as was the table and benches, where the crew would sit and
eat (and eat!). The sinks were also wooden but made from finished pine.
At one side of the sinks was a large stand to hold the galvanized water
pails. The stove was a wood burning, double oven behemoth called
"Enterprise Camper" This stove would be about ten feet long and four
wide with a fire-box at each end. At the outside end of the structure
facing the mill, was the meat house, it was there that the quarters of
beef, pork, salted beef and pork as well as salted cod, and fresh frozen
fish. The vegetables, which consisted of the basics..... potatoes,
carrots, turnips, parsnips and cabbage were of course kept inside to
prevent freezing and a fire was kept burning all through the night to
forestall this calamity.

Mom's day began at four am. The first order of that day and every
day was make the day's supply of bread. Yeast came in ten pound cans;
the flour in 98 pound sacks. She would set the yeast and while it was
working would start to prepare whatever breakfast was going to be on
that particular morning. Always two breakfast meats, like sausage and
ham or bologna or bacon, invariably baked beans, and always boiled and
fried eggs. The mixing pans were very large; two pans would holdsufficient dough for the days baking of white bread. As soon as the
yeast was ready she would commence mixing while day continued with the
breakfast, carrying wood to feed the insatiable appetite of the cook
stove and water for the operation from the near-by brook.

After breakfast was over and the table cleared, while dad washed the
dishes, she would start on the pies. Twelve pies each and every
day...... And also molasses cookies, sugar cookies, doughnuts and war
cake. All mixed by hand. Between the mill gang and the woods gang, plus
itinerant truckers, she fed that winter an average of sixty eight men
per day and baked up a 98 pound bag of Robin Hood every day while doing
this (to me) remarkable feat.

Cheers,
Don