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Bread, in Summer or Winter
In summer take three pints of cold or tepid water, four tablespoons of yeast, one tea-spoon of salt; stir in flour enough to make a thick sponge (rather thicker than griddle-cakes). Let stand until morning, then add more flour, mix stiff, and knead ten minutes; place in a pan, let rise until light, knead for another ten minutes; mold into four loaves, and set to rise, but do not let it get too light; bake in a moderate oven one hour. If bread is mixed at six o'clock in the morning, the baking ought to be done by ten o'clock. In winter take one pint of buttermilk or clabbered milk; let it scald (not boil); make a well in the center of the flour, into it turn the hot milk, add one tea-spoon of salt, enough flour and water to make sufficient sponge, and one tea-cup of yeast; let stand until morning, and then prepare the bread as in summer. This is more convenient to make in winter, since a hot fire is needed to heat the milk.-Mrs. D. Buxton, Marysville, Ohio.
A straightforward overnight sponge bread, written for a kitchen with no thermostat and a cook who judged rising by the weather. Two things need translating: the yeast and the milk.
- The yeast is not packet yeast"Four tablespoons of yeast" means a homemade liquid or potato yeast of unknown strength, closer to a sourdough starter in behaviour. For an overnight sponge of this size, about 1/2 teaspoon of instant or active dry yeast is plenty; a full packet will exhaust the dough by morning.
- Quantities and yieldThree pints of water is 6 cups, and will take roughly 4 1/2 to 5 lb of bread flour across the two mixings. The recipe says four loaves, which works out to large loaves of about 2 lb of dough each -- more than a standard 8x4 tin holds comfortably, so divide further if your tins are small.
- Moderate ovenThe recipe gives no temperature; 'moderate' is conventionally read as somewhere in the region of 350-375F. A full hour suits four large loaves; check for an internal temperature of 200-210F rather than trusting the clock.
- "Thicker than griddle-cakes"The sponge should be a thick, sticky batter that falls from the spoon in sheets rather than pouring, stiffer than pancake batter. It will be domed and bubbly by morning.
- Clabbered milkClabber is raw milk soured until it sets — not obtainable from pasteurised milk, which spoils rather than clabbers. Use cultured buttermilk, and scald it (bring to just below a simmer, about 180F) exactly as directed. Scalded milk gives a softer crumb; unheated whey proteins slacken the gluten and the loaf will be flatter.
- The hinge: do not overproof the shaped loaves"Set to rise, but do not let it get too light" is the whole instruction. This is a lean, long-fermented dough with no fat or sugar to hold structure; taken past a full double it collapses in the oven. Bake at about three-quarters proof, when a poked finger springs back slowly.
- The two kneadingsTen minutes, knock back, ten minutes again is more work than a modern schedule demands. A stand mixer for 8 minutes, then a fold at the halfway point of the bulk rise, will get you to roughly comparable gluten development.
- Why summer and winter differThe practical variable is room temperature, and hot milk carried heat into the flour in a cold kitchen; the recipe itself gives the reason as convenience, 'since a hot fire is needed to heat the milk.' In a house held at 68-70F, the summer method works year round.
Buckeye Cookery (first published in the 1870s and reissued repeatedly through the 1880s) collected recipes over the names of the Ohio women who supplied them, and Mrs. Buxton's entry is a good example of what that format preserved: not a fixed formula but a household routine, keyed to the weather and the state of the stove. Households commonly kept their own yeast alive in a jar — hop yeast, potato yeast, or a saved portion of sponge — which is why the amount is given in tablespoons and teacups with no indication of strength; commercial compressed yeast was only beginning to spread through American kitchens in this period, and dry granulated yeast was decades away. The six-to-ten o'clock timetable and the note that winter's hot milk was convenient "since a hot fire is needed" both point to a wood or coal range that had to be lit and fed by hand, making bread a task planned around the fire rather than the reverse.