Milk Loaf
Formula Hard wheat flour, 100 lbs.
Water, 61 lbs. (approximately).
Salt, 1¾ lbs.
Sugar, 1¼ lbs.
Yeast, 1¾ lbs.
Milk powder, 5½ lbs.
Shortening, 2 lbs.
Malt extract, 1¼ lbs.
Method Dissolve the yeast and malt extract in 4 qts. of water and place to one side. Put the balance of the water, sugar and milk powder into the mixer and stir to dissolve these ingredients. Now add the flour and begin mixing. When partly mixed, add the yeast. After the yeast has been incorporated, add the shortening and continue mixing until the dough is smooth and elastic. The dough should be 80 degrees when mixed.
Fermentation First rising, 2¼ hours; second rising, 1 hour; third rising, 1/2 hour; allow the dough to rest 15 minutes when it will be ready to be divided.
This is a bakery formula written for a mechanical mixer and a hundred-pound sack of flour, not a household recipe. It converts cleanly once you read it as baker's percentages and scale down.
- Scaling it downDivide everything by 100 to get percentages, then multiply by your flour weight. For a 500 g flour batch: 305 g water, 9 g salt, 28 g milk powder, 10 g shortening, 9 g yeast, 1 g malt extract. Two loaves' worth of dough from 500 g flour if you use standard 1 lb pans.
- The sugar figure is doubtfulAs printed, 14 lbs sugar on 100 lbs flour is 14 percent, far richer than a milk loaf of this period would normally be and enough to slow the yeast noticeably. It reads like a mangled 1¼ or 4 lbs. Treat 4 to 6 percent as the sensible range and take the printed number as unreliable.
- Salt is low by modern tasteSalt -- the printed 13/4 is 1¾ lbs, i.e. 1.75 percent of the flour, which is within the normal range for bread dough, if at the lower end of what some bakers now use. Nudge it up if you prefer a saltier loaf.
- Milk powder"Milk powder" here means non-fat dry milk solids, the standard bakery ingredient of the era. Use plain skimmed milk powder, not a malted or sweetened drink mix. Whole milk powder works but adds fat the formula does not account for.
- Malt extractA quarter pound per hundredweight of flour is a trace dose whose job is to feed the yeast and help crust colour. Diastatic barley malt syrup or powder is the right substitute; if you have neither, omit it rather than substituting molasses.
- ShorteningIn trade usage this is a solid vegetable or lard-based fat. Butter or a neutral solid shortening both work at 2 percent. Add it after the gluten has begun to develop, as directed -- that instruction is the one worth following literally.
- Dough temperature80F is the whole point of the water calculation. Take the flour's temperature and adjust the water up or down to hit it, since the fermentation schedule below assumes that figure.
- The fermentation scheduleFour hours in three stages with punch-downs between suits fresh compressed bakery yeast. With modern instant dry yeast at the same weight the dough will overproof badly. Cut the yeast to about a third and watch the dough rather than the clock, or keep the yeast weight and hold the dough cooler, around 65-68F.
- Baking, which the original omitsAfter dividing, scale, rest, shape, pan and proof until nearly doubled. Bake pan loaves at 400-425F for 25 to 35 minutes, to an internal temperature of about 200F. The milk solids and sugar brown fast, so tent the tops if they colour before the crumb is set.
Baker's Weekly was a trade paper, and formulas like this one were written for the man running a retail bakeshop with a dough mixer and a bank of pans, which is why the quantities start at a hundred pounds of flour and why no oven temperature is given -- the baker knew his own oven. The milk loaf itself belongs to a shift in commercial baking in the early twentieth century, when dried skimmed milk solids became cheap and reliable enough to build into everyday bread. Dry milk gave a softer crumb, a longer shelf life and a browner crust than a plain water dough, and it let bakers sell a loaf on the strength of the word "milk" without the spoilage risk of handling fluid milk in a hot shop. The formula's three-stage fermentation with two punches is simply what the printed schedule calls for.