Gluten Bread
2 cupfuls scalded milk 2 cupfuls boiling water 2 teaspoonfuls salt 1 egg 2 tablespoonfuls Crisco 1/4 cupful warm water 1/2 yeast cake 3 cupfuls gluten flour Mix Crisco, boiling water, milk, and salt. When lukewarm, add yeast cake dissolved in warm water, egg well beaten, and gluten. Let rise, when risen and spongy beat well, add enough gluten to make a stiff dough and knead well. Allow to rise, shape in loaves, place in Criscoed bread pans, let rise, and bake for one hour in moderately hot oven.
Sufficient for two small loaves.
A Crisco-era formula written when gluten flour was sold chiefly as a diabetic and dyspeptic food. The quantities as printed are unusually wet, and the flour it calls for is not quite what sits on the shelf today.
- The flour is the whole question"Gluten flour" in this period meant a wheat flour from which much of the starch had been washed or milled away; protein content varied a good deal between brands but was far above ordinary flour. What is usually sold today under that name is vital wheat gluten at around 75-80 percent protein, which is a dough conditioner, not a bread flour. Using it cup for cup gives a tough, rubbery loaf; a workable substitute is high-gluten or bread flour with a spoonful or two of vital wheat gluten added.
- The liquid is out of proportionOver four cupfuls of liquid against three cupfuls of flour is a batter, not a dough. The recipe accounts for this with "add enough gluten to make a stiff dough" at the second stage, but expect to add considerably more flour before it kneads, and note that the amount needed sits awkwardly with the stated yield. Hold some liquid back at the start if you would rather not guess.
- Yeast cakeHalf a compressed yeast cake of the period is about 1 teaspoon of active dry or instant yeast. Dissolve active dry in the quarter cup of warm water at about 105F; instant can go straight into the flour.
- CriscoAny neutral solid shortening works, as does an equal amount of butter or oil. "Criscoed bread pans" simply means greased.
- Scalding the milkScalding was done to kill enzymes and stray bacteria in raw milk. With pasteurised milk it is unnecessary, though it does no harm; just make sure the mixture has cooled to lukewarm before the yeast goes in, or the yeast dies.
- Oven"Moderately hot" is 375-400F. A full hour at that heat is a long bake for two small loaves; check at 40 minutes and pull them at an internal temperature of 195-200F.
- Handling the doughHigh-protein doughs tighten quickly. Knead firmly but let the dough rest ten minutes if it fights back, and expect the rises to be slower and the crumb closer than a standard white loaf.
- YieldTwo small loaves, as the recipe states. It slices best fully cold; warm gluten bread tears.
This comes from A Calendar of Dinners, the Marion Harris Neil collection issued by Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco after its 1911 introduction, which is why shortening appears in a bread that does not strictly need it and why the pans are "Criscoed" rather than greased. Gluten flour itself belongs to an older story: before insulin, physicians managing diabetes leaned heavily on starch-restricted diets, and gluten bread, almond bread and bran biscuits were staples of that regime, sold through pharmacies and health-food suppliers as well as grocers. Whether the flours actually delivered the low starch content advertised was a running complaint in the medical press of the period. The same product had a second, larger market among people who simply believed a high-protein bread was more wholesome, and it is probably that audience a general dinner calendar had in mind.