Raisin Bread
Formula Hard wheat flour, 100 lbs.
Water, 60 lbs.
Sugar, 2 lbs.
Salt, 1½ lbs.
Yeast, 12 lbs.
Shortening, 2½ lbs.
Milk, condensed, 4 lbs.
Malt extract, 1 lb.
Raisins, 45 lbs.
Method Place the salt, sugar, milk and 54 lbs. of water in the mixer. Start the machine to dissolve the ingredients. Dissolve the yeast and malt in 6 lbs. of water, having the water the proper degree. Put the flour into the machine and begin mixing. When the dough is partly mixed, add the yeast. When it is about two-thirds mixed add the shortening. When this has been incorporated, add the raisins and continue mixing until the dough is smooth. The dough should be 80 to 82 degrees F. when leaving the machine. Place in a trough and allow to ferment. First rising, 2¾ hours; second rising, 1 hour; third rising, 30 minutes; to the bench in 15 minutes. Have the pans slightly greased before placing the dough into pans.
This is a commercial bakeshop formula written for a 100-pound flour batch and a mechanical mixer, not a household recipe. Everything in it is usable, but it needs scaling and the baking instructions have to be supplied, because the original stops at the pan.
- Scaling downRead the weights as baker's percentages: water 60%, sugar 2%, salt 1.5%, yeast 12%, shortening 2.5%, condensed milk 4%, malt 1%, raisins 45%. For a two-loaf home batch use 1,000 g flour, 600 g water, 20 g sugar, 15 g salt, 25 g shortening, 40 g condensed milk, 10 g malt and 450 g raisins.
- The yeast is the one figure not to copyThe yeast is the one figure not to copy — Twelve pounds per hundred of flour means compressed (fresh) yeast, and even so it is a heavy commercial dose meant to drive the four-and-a-half-hour cycle set out here. Fresh yeast at 2–3% of flour weight, or instant dry at roughly a third of that, will do the same work; the full amount will overproof a small batch and leave a yeasty taste.
- Malt extractMalt extract — Probably a diastatic barley malt extract, common in period bread formulas for crust colour and sugar conversion, though the formula says only 'malt extract'. Barley malt syrup at the same 1% works; diastatic malt powder is far more concentrated, so use about a quarter of the weight.
- Condensed milk is ambiguousTrade usage in this era covered both sweetened condensed and unsweetened evaporated milk. With only 2% sugar in the formula, sweetened condensed is the likelier reading, but the original does not say. Evaporated milk plus a little extra sugar gives a predictable result.
- Water temperature\"Having the water the proper degree\" means adjusting it so the dough comes off the mixer at 80–82°F, as stated. In a home kitchen that usually means water in the mid-70s to low 80s; check the finished dough with a thermometer rather than guessing.
- The risings are punch-downsThe risings are punch-downs — A trough is a long open fermentation box. The 2¾ hours, 1 hour and 30 minutes are three stages of bulk fermentation separated by punches, then 15 minutes' rest before dividing and shaping.
- RaisinsForty-five pounds per hundred of flour is a heavily fruited loaf. Add them at the very end, as directed, and mix only until distributed — further mixing tears them and stains the crumb grey. Rinsing and draining them first keeps them from pulling water out of the dough.
- Baking, which the original omitsScale at about 1½ lb per standard loaf pan, proof until the dough crowns the rim, and bake at 375–385°F for 35–40 minutes to an internal 200°F. Raisin bread browns faster than plain white because of the fruit sugar, so tent it if the crust darkens early.
- YieldYield — The listed weights total about 228 lb of dough — roughly 150 one-and-a-half-pound loaves. Scaled to 1,000 g of flour it gives two generous loaves.
Baker's Weekly was a trade paper, and formulas like this one were written for the man running a mixer and a trough, not for a home cook — hence the hundredweight of flour, the dough temperature specified to two degrees, and the total silence on oven heat, which was presumably common knowledge in the shop. Raisin bread became a staple of American commercial bakeries in the first decades of the twentieth century, helped along by aggressive promotion from the California raisin growers, who had a surplus crop and a clear interest in persuading bakers to work fruit into everyday loaves; National Raisin Bread Week campaigns are often said to date from the 1920s and to be part of that same push. The high fruit ratio here — nearly half the flour weight — reflects a loaf sold on its raisins, and the condensed milk and malt extract point to a period when both were ordinary bakeshop stock rather than pantry curiosities.