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Bread Raised Three Times
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Begin about 5 P. M., plan for six loaves, somewhat larger than bakers' loaves; take two little cakes of yeast, put them into a pint of tepid water, and, when soft, beat in thoroughly enough flour to make a thick batter, and put in a warm place. If the excellent "Farmer's Yeast," the recipe for which is given hereafter, is used, take half a tea-cup and stir into the batter. A good dish for this purpose is a large bowl, a broad open pitcher, or a bright threequart tin pail, and it should be clean in the strictest sense. should rise in about two hours; and when nearly light, take six or eight medium-sized potatoes, pare neatly, rinse clean, and boil in three pints of water till well done, mash very fine in the water while hot. Have ready a bread-pan of sifted flour, into which put a tea-spoon of salt, half a cup of white sugar, and a bit of lard as large as an egg; then riddle the potato mash, hot as it is, through a sieve or fine colander into the flour, and stir with a kitchen spoon into a stiff dough. This scalds about half the flour used in the batch of bread. This mass must cool till it will not scald the yeast, which may now be mixed in and put in a warm, not hot, place for second rising, which will be accomplished by morning, when the kneading may be done. Kneading is the finest point of bread-making, and contains more of the art than any other; it requires skill, time, patience, and hard work. Work in flour no faster than is required to allow thorough kneading, which can not be done in less than forty-five minutes, but should not be worked much over an hour; one hour is a good uniform rule. The mechanical bakers use sets of rollers driven by steam power, between which the dough is passed, coming out a sheet an inch thick; it is folded together several times and rolled again and again. This process should be imitated somewhat by the hands in the family kitchen. The working of the dough gives grain and flakiness to the bread. The dough when kneaded should be soft, but not sticky-stiff enough to retain its roundness on the board. Put back into the pan for the third rising, which will require but little time, and when light, cut off enough for each loaf by itself. Knead but little, and put into the baking-pans. If the first kneading has been well done, no more flour will be needed in molding into loaves. These must remain in the baking-pans till nearly as large as the loaves ought to be, when they may be put into a well-heated oven. If the oven is a trifle too hot, or if it tends to bake hard on the top, a piece of brown paper may be put over the loaves (save some clean grocer's paper for this purpose), and from forty to sixty minutes will cook it thoroughly. After the loaves are put into the baking-pans, avoid jarring them, as it will make portions of them heavy.
If the yeast is "set" at 5 P. M., the bread will be ready for dinner next day; if in the morning, the baking will be done early in the evening, or twelve hours after, with fair temperature and good yeast. Bread made in this way will be good for a week, and, with fair weather and careful keeping, even two weeks. When dry, a slice toasted will be as crisp, sweet, and granular as Yankee ginger-bread. - Mrs. H. Young, Minneapolis, Minn.
A full day's bread schedule from a Minneapolis contributor: a yeast sponge at 5 P.M., a potato-scalded dough overnight, kneading in the morning, baking by dinner. The method still works, but two instructions need adjusting and one measurement is missing entirely.
- Ignore the 45-minute kneadingThis is the one direction to overturn. The recipe's own reasoning is that the hand should imitate the mechanical bakers' rollers, and long kneading was standard advice in the period; nineteenth-century flours also behaved differently from ours, though how much so varied by mill and region. Modern bread flour develops full gluten in 10 to 15 minutes by hand, or 8 to 10 in a stand mixer with the dough hook; going far beyond that on a long-fermented dough only tears the structure you have built.
- Flour is never specifiedThe recipe gives a pan of sifted flour and tells you to add more during kneading, with no quantity anywhere. For six large loaves on this ratio expect roughly 5 lb, or about 18 cups, but treat that as an estimate and go by feel: soft, not sticky, holding a round on the board. Halving the whole recipe to three loaves is more realistic for one household.
- Two little cakes of yeastThese are cakes of compressed fresh yeast, not the modern quarter-ounce foil cube. Two of the small commercial cakes are roughly equivalent to 2 packets (about 4 1/2 teaspoons) of active dry yeast, but because the sponge and the second rise together run twelve to fifteen hours, half that amount is plenty and gives better flavour.
- The potato scaldMashing six to eight potatoes into their own three pints of cooking water and riddling it hot through a colander into the flour gelatinises the starch in about half the batch. This is what keeps the loaves moist for a week, as claimed. Do not skip the sieve step or you get lumps that never disperse.
- Let it cool before the yeast goes inHot potato mash will kill yeast. Wait until the dough is no warmer than about 110F before mixing in the sponge. The recipe asks only for a 'warm, not hot, place' for the overnight rise; ordinary room temperature works well for a rise this long, and anything much warmer risks an over-fermented, sour dough by morning.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe says only 'well-heated oven' and gives no figure; 400 to 425F is a reasonable modern equivalent for large loaves. The stated 40 to 60 minutes is right for loaves this size; check for an internal temperature of 200 to 205F rather than relying on the clock.
- Brown paper over the topsThe recipe asks for clean grocer's paper, saved for the purpose. Use parchment or loosely tented foil instead of any modern paper bag, which may carry printing inks and adhesives.
- YieldSix loaves 'somewhat larger than bakers' loaves' probably means something on the order of 1 1/2 to 2 lb of dough each, though the recipe never defines the size. Ordinary 9x5-inch pans will take that; smaller tins risk overflowing during the final rise.
Potato bread of this kind was one form of American home baking before reliable commercial yeast: the potato supplied both a hospitable food for the yeast and the starch gel that kept loaves edible for a week in an unheated pantry. Buckeye Cookery, first published in Ohio in 1876 as a fundraiser and reprinted repeatedly, was assembled from contributions by named women across the Midwest, which is why this entry carries Mrs. H. Young's name and her own baking timetable. The aside about "mechanical bakers" using steam-driven rollers is a real glimpse of the 1870s, when commercial bakeries were industrialising and home cooks were being told, in print, to imitate the factory rather than the other way round. The long kneading time recommended here was standard advice in nineteenth-century manuals and persisted well into the twentieth century.