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Rolled Oats Bread
2 cupfuls boiling water 2 tablespoonfuls Crisco 1 cupful rolled oats 1/2 cupful molasses 2 teaspoonfuls salt 1/2 yeast cake 1/2 cupful lukewarm water
A Crisco-era yeast loaf given as a bare list of quantities, with the method — and, conspicuously, the flour — left to the cook's judgment. Two things need settling before you start.
- The flour is missingNo flour appears in the list, though this cannot be made without it. Expect to need roughly 5 to 6 cups of bread flour, added a cup at a time until the dough clears the bowl; the exact figure depends on how much water the oats absorb, so work by feel rather than by number.
- Scald the oats firstThe hinge of the recipe: pour the 2 cups boiling water over the rolled oats with the shortening, molasses and salt, and let the mixture stand until it is no more than lukewarm. Yeast added to hot oatmeal is dead yeast, and this is the step the original omits entirely.
- Yeast cakeCompressed yeast cakes of the period were commonly around 0.6 oz, though sizes varied by maker. Half a cake therefore works out to roughly a scant teaspoon of instant or active dry yeast, dissolved in the 1/2 cup lukewarm water. The small quantity suggests a long, slow rise — several hours, or overnight in a cool room.
- CriscoHydrogenated vegetable shortening, and the reason this book exists. Butter or a neutral oil will serve here at 2 tablespoons; the fat is for softness and keeping quality, not flavor.
- Rolled oatsOld-fashioned rolled oats, not instant or steel-cut. Instant oats turn to paste in boiling water and will make the crumb gummy.
- MolassesUse unsulphured baking molasses rather than blackstrap, which is far more bitter than the table molasses of 1915 and will dominate the loaf.
- BakingShape into two loaves in standard 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 inch pans, let rise until not quite doubled, and bake at 375F for 35 to 45 minutes, to an internal temperature of about 200F. Molasses browns fast; tent with foil if the crust darkens early.
- YieldTwo modest loaves, or one large one. The crumb is close and slightly moist, and it slices better the day after baking.
A Calendar of Dinners belongs to a genre of cookbook that was really advertising: Procter & Gamble put Crisco on the market in 1911 and commissioned recipe collections in which the new hydrogenated shortening appeared in nearly every formula, from pie crust to yeast bread. That accounts for the two tablespoons here, where an older New England receipt would have said lard or butter. The loaf itself is much older than the shortening — oatmeal and molasses breads were long-standing household bread in northern New England and the Maritimes, where oats grew well and molasses came cheap off the West Indies trade, and scalding the oats to soften them before adding flour is often described as the usual method in nineteenth-century American cookery.