Antiques & Collecting: Dough box used to make bread

Your great-grandmother may have used this antique box in her kitchen, but not many of us use it today since there are newer, faster ways to get the same result.

The pine box is 27 inches high by 36 inches wide and 21 inches deep. It has dovetailed sides and tapered legs. The removable top is made of two boards.

Give up?

It is a dough box used for proofing bread dough. The box was filled with flour, then water was added and the mixture was kneaded. More ingredients were added, including yeast, and more kneading. Then a rest, letting the dough rise, punching it down, kneading it again, reshaping and letting it rest. This was done several times.

When the dough felt right, the box was covered and moved to a warm place where the dough could “proof.” That is what the final rise is called. It was shaped again, put in the oven and baked.

Families ate a lot of bread, and most housewives made bread at least once a week. The finished bread was taken from the oven to rest on the lid of the dough box, then cut and served.

And the lid had another use. It kept the mice and bugs away from the bread.

The antique box sold for just $219. Today they make electric proofing boxes to do this work.

I have two Cabbage Patch Kids dolls from 1985 that I would like to sell. Both have “birth certificates,” “adoption papers” and their original clothes. Would you let me know what they are worth?

Cabbage Patch dolls were first made in 1977 by a 21-year-old art student named Xavier Roberts of Helen, Georgia. He called them “Little People Originals” and sold them at craft shows across the South.

In 1982, toy manufacturer Coleco Industries became the licensed manufacturer, and the name was changed to Cabbage Patch Kids. The fad had faded by about 1986.

In 1987, Coleco introduced a “talking” Cabbage Patch Kid doll as a last-ditch effort to renew interest, but the company went bankrupt in the late 1980s.

Cabbage Patch Kids dolls sell in online shops from $10 to about $25. Dolls in original packaging with their adoption papers sell for about $50. Some very rare dolls sell for more.

Current Prices

Spatterware pitcher, American eagle, shield, arrows, blue, footed, c. 1850, 11 1/2 inches, $110.

Mochaware dry mustard pot, cylindrical, bell-shaped lid, seaweed, orange ground, c. 1900, 4 3/4 inches, $250.

Rose Mandarin punch bowl, Chinese figures, courtyard, birds, flowers, medallions, 10 1/4 inches, $400.

Sampler, alphabet, nine alphabet and numeral rows, two chimney house, flowering tree, Martha Ann Dearing, 1819, 16 3/4 x 21 1/2 inches, $870.

Tip: Don't pull an old book off the shelf by the spine, and don't pack books on the shelf so closely that it is a struggle to get a book out.