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Straight Dough for Bread
Formula Hard wheat flour, 100 lbs.
Water, 61 lbs.
Salt, 1/2 to 1¾ lbs.
Malt extract, 2½ lbs.
Yeast, 1¾ lbs.
Shortening 2 to 2½ lbs.
Dried milk powder, 5½ lbs.
Method Dissolve the yeast and half of the malt extract in 3 qts. of water and place to one side. Put the balance of the water, salt, malt extract and milk powder in the mixer and stir to dissolve the ingredients. Add the flour and begin mixing until the dough is smooth and elastic. The dough should be from 80 to 82 degrees when leaving the mixer.
Fermentation If a four hour fermentation period is employed it may be divided as follows: First rising, 2¼ hours; second rising, 1 hour; third rising, 1½ hour.
Allow the dough to rest 15 minutes, when it should be ready to be divided. When milk doughs are made, it is advisable to use a little more yeast than when water doughs are made, as a larger yeast content produces a more vigorous fermentation and the bread will have a larger volume. It will be noticed that 7¾ lbs. of powdered milk are used in this formula. This is equivalent to approximately 12 per cent of milk solids in the amount of water used. This will give you a considerably larger yield than when water doughs are made.
This is a commercial bakeshop formula written in baker's percentage against 100 lbs of flour, with a mixer and a proof box assumed. It converts cleanly to a home batch if you treat the flour weight as the base and scale everything to it.
- Scaling it downDivide every weight by 100 to get a single generous loaf's worth: 1 lb (about 454 g) flour, 9.8 oz (275 g) water, and so on. Weigh rather than measure by volume, since the whole point of a formula like this is the ratio.
- Hydration and flourAt 61 lbs water to 100 lbs flour this is a 61 percent dough, firm by modern artisan standards but right for a pan loaf. "Hard wheat flour" means high-protein bread flour, not all-purpose.
- Conflicting milk figuresThe formula lists dried milk powder in the ingredient block, but the closing paragraph cites a different, higher figure and calls it roughly 12 percent milk solids on the water. Twelve percent of 61 lbs is about 7.3 lbs, so the discussion and the ingredient line do not agree; treat 5 to 7 percent on flour weight as the workable range.
- Milk powder has changedNonfat dry milk sold for baking is usually high-heat treated, which denatures the whey proteins that depress loaf volume; the low-heat powders of the period could give sticky, lower-volume loaves. Retail instant powder is not always high-heat, so results may vary.
- Malt extractIn bakery formulas of this kind this usually meant diastatic barley malt, used for enzyme activity and crust colour rather than sweetness. Non-diastatic malt or honey will not give the enzymatic effect; sugar alone is not equivalent.
- YeastThe yeast here would almost certainly have been compressed fresh yeast. Use roughly one third that weight in instant dry yeast, and mix it into the flour rather than dissolving it, unless you have fresh yeast to hand.
- Dough temperature is the hingeEverything about the four-hour schedule depends on the dough leaving the mixer at 80 to 82F. Adjust your water temperature to hit that number; a dough coming out at 70F will not be ready when the clock says it should be.
- Fermentation scheduleThe three risings are punch-downs, not separate bulks: knock the dough back at each interval and return it to the same container. Home kitchens run cooler than a bakery, so judge by the finger-dent test rather than the stated times.
- YieldThe full formula runs to roughly 175 lbs of dough, or something over a hundred 1.5 lb pan loaves. Scale to the number of loaves you want before you start.
"Straight dough" names the simplest of the classic bakery methods: everything goes into the mixer at once, as against the sponge-and-dough process, where a portion of flour, water and yeast ferments alone for hours first. Formulas of this type were circulated for small commercial shops, and milk bread is often said to have been promoted as a nutritional improvement on plain water doughs, with dried milk solids making it practical in bakeries that could not handle fluid milk in quantity. The low-heat milk powders then available carried whey proteins that weakened gluten and depressed loaf volume, a fault later addressed by high-heat processing; the closing note about extra yeast, however, is explained in the text itself as a way of getting a more vigorous fermentation and greater volume.