Ginger Bread
Flour, 100 lbs.
Formula Molasses (light New Orleans), 22½ qts.
Sugar, 1¼ lbs.
Shortening, 11¼ lbs.
Salt, 3/4 lb.
Water, 22½ qts.
Eggs, 2½ qts.
Bicarbonate soda, 2½ lbs.
Ginger, 2 lbs.
Cinnamon, 1¾ lbs.
Cloves, ¼ lb.
Method Put the molasses, sugar, shortening and spice in the mixer and mix until the ingredients have been thoroughly incorporated, then add the eggs and mix slightly. Now add the flour and bicarbonate of soda, which has previously been thoroughly dissolved in water, and mix to break up the incorporated ingredients. Then add the flour and mix to a very smooth batter. The mixture is now ready to be scaled in the forms.
This is a wholesale bakery formula, not a household recipe: 100 lbs of flour will yield something on the order of 500 sheet-pan portions. It also comes to us with several quantities mangled in printing, so read the numbers with suspicion before scaling.
- Garbled figures"11/4 lbs" sugar and "13/4 lbs" cinnamon are almost certainly 1¼ lb and 1¾ lb. The shortening at 11¼ lb and cloves at ¼ lb match the printed page; note that 11¼ lb of fat to 100 lb of flour makes a lean, chewy gingerbread rather than a rich one.
- Dividing by 100At one-hundredth scale you get 1 lb flour (about 3½ cups), 7¼ fl oz molasses, 7¼ fl oz water, about 1½ Tbsp beaten egg, 1¾ oz shortening, 1/5 oz sugar, about 2½ tsp baking soda, about 4½ tsp ginger, about 3 tsp cinnamon, and about ½ tsp cloves. Weigh rather than measure; the flour figure is the anchor for everything else.
- Two "add the flour" stepsThe method says to add flour twice. This may be a printing slip, or it may indicate a two-stage addition: part of the flour with the dissolved soda water to loosen the paste, then the remainder to finish the batter. The text does not make clear which.
- Dissolve the soda firstThis is the hinge. Two and a half pounds of bicarbonate per hundredweight of flour is a lot, and any undissolved lump leaves a bitter, soapy yellow-brown spot in the crumb. Stir it into the measured water until completely clear before it goes near the flour.
- "Light New Orleans molasses"A first-boiling cane molasses, mild and sweet — closest today is ordinary unsulphured molasses, not blackstrap. Blackstrap will make the gingerbread bitter.
- "Scaled in the forms"Bakery usage: portion the batter by weight into greased pans. For a household batch use a lined 9-inch square or 8x8 pan, filled to about two-thirds.
- OvenThe formula gives none. A molasses batter this dark scorches easily; bake at 350F, 30-40 minutes for a 9-inch square, until the centre springs back. Shortening, not butter, means it stays moist for days but browns less on top.
- ShorteningIn a commercial bakery of this kind this meant hydrogenated vegetable shortening or lard, both firm at room temperature. Either works; butter substitutes fine at small scale and improves the flavour.
Sheet gingerbread was cheap, heavily spiced, sweetened almost entirely with molasses rather than sugar, and long-keeping because of the molasses and the high proportion of liquid. Bakery formulas of this type were printed in hundredweights of flour so a foreman could scale them to whatever mixer he had, and the baker's habit of expressing everything against 100 lbs of flour is the ancestor of modern baker's percentage. The specification of "light New Orleans" molasses reflects a period when Louisiana cane syrups were graded and sold by boiling — light first-run syrup for eating and baking, the darker later boilings for cheaper work and for industrial use. The reliance on bicarbonate of soda alone, rather than baking powder, is deliberate: molasses is acidic enough to supply the reaction itself, and soda-and-molasses gives gingerbread its characteristic dark colour and faintly alkaline tang.