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The Sponge
This is made from warm water or milk, yeast and flour (some add mashed potatoes) mixed together in the proportion of one pint wetting (water or milk) to two pints of sifted flour. If milk is used it should be new, and must be first scalded, and then cooled to blood heat. The scalding tends to prevent souring. In using water bring it to blood heat. If the "wetting" is too hot, the bread will be When water is used a tablespoon* of lard or butter makes the bread more tender. Bread made from milk is, of course, more tender and nutritious, but it has not the sweet taste of the wheat, and will not keep as long as that made from water. When mixed with milk it requires less flour and less kneading. In summer, care must be taken not to set sponge too early, at least not before eight or nine o'clock in the evening. (Sponge mixed with bran water, warm in winter and cold in summer, makes sweeter bread. Boil bran in the proportion of one pint to a quart of water and strain.) In very hot weather, sponge may be made with cold water. In winter, mix the batter with water or milk, at blood warmth, testing * Whenever, in this book, the words cupful, coffee-cupful, tea-cupful, table-spoonful, etc., occur, the termination "ful" is dropped, for the sake of brevity. it with the finger, and making it as warm as can be borne; stir in the flour, which will cool it sufficiently for the yeast; cover closely and place in a warm and even temperature. A good plan is to fold a clean blanket several times, and cover with it, providing the sponge is set in a very large crock or jar, so that there is no danger of its running over. As a general rule, one small tea-cup of yeast and three pints of "wetting" will make sponge enough for four ordinary loaves. In all sponges add the yeast last, making sure that the sponge is not hot enough to scald it; when placed to rise, always cover closely. In cold weather the temperature runs down very quickly, in many kitchens, after the fire is out, and the bread should be set earlier in the evening, and in a warmer place; a temperature of eighty or ninety degrees is right. When it rises well for the first two hours, it will go on rising unless the temperature falls below the freezing point. It is an improvement to beat the sponge thoroughly, like batter for a cake, for fifteen minutes. Never set sponge in tin, but always in stoneware, because a more steady and uniform heat can be maintained in a stone jar than in tin.
Always be
This is not a finished bread but the overnight preferment that most nineteenth-century loaves began with — a loose batter of liquid, flour and yeast left to ripen before the dough is made up. The proportions and temperatures still work; the yeast does not translate directly.
- The core ratioOne pint of liquid to two pints of sifted flour, which in modern terms is about 2 cups liquid to roughly 4 cups (about a pound) of sifted flour — a thick, pourable batter rather than a dough. The larger batch given later, three pints of wetting and a small teacup of yeast, is sized for four loaves.
- "Wetting"An old bakers' word for the liquid component, water or milk. It survives in this book only as a noun; nothing is being dampened.
- Blood heatAbout 98F, and the text's advice to test with a finger and make it "as warm as can be borne" is the practical version. A thermometer is easier: liquid above roughly 120F will begin to damage yeast. The sentence that breaks off at "the bread will be" is lost in this printing, though the book elsewhere insists the wetting must not be hot enough to scald the yeast.
- The yeast is the real gapA small teacup of yeast means homemade liquid barm or a soft cake of compressed yeast, not modern dry yeast. There is no honest conversion, since barm strength varied by household; for a sponge of this size, a scant teaspoon of instant or active dry yeast is the usual modern starting point, adjusted after you see how it behaves overnight.
- Scalding the milkNecessary in 1877 because raw milk soured and because unheated whey proteins slacken a dough. With pasteurized milk the souring problem is gone, though scalding and cooling still gives a slightly stronger crumb. Cool to blood heat before the yeast goes in, without exception.
- Rising temperature and timingEighty to ninety degrees is the target, which is warmer than most kitchens and explains the folded blanket. The instruction not to set sponge before eight or nine on a summer evening is about controlling a long, warm overnight ferment; in an air-conditioned house you can set it earlier, and a cold-water sponge in hot weather is sound practice for the same reason.
- Bran waterOne pint of bran boiled in a quart of water and strained, used as the wetting. Boiling leaves minerals and dissolved sugars rather than active enzymes, and gives a faintly nutty sweetness. Wheat bran from the health-food aisle works; the liquid keeps a day or two refrigerated.
- Stoneware, not tinSound reasoning — thin metal loses heat fast and the sponge stalls. A ceramic or glass bowl is the equivalent today, and it should be several times the volume of the batter, since a well-fed sponge can triple.
- Beating fifteen minutesNot padding. Prolonged beating develops gluten in the batter and aerates it, and it genuinely improves the finished loaf. A stand mixer with the paddle does the same job in four or five minutes on medium.
The sponge-and-dough method predates the recipe by centuries and was standard practice wherever yeast was unreliable: a small amount of active leaven is given a warm, wet, flour-rich environment overnight to multiply before it is asked to raise a stiff dough. Buckeye Cookery, compiled in Ohio in the 1870s from contributed household recipes, was written for cooks whose yeast came from a jar of barm kept on the kitchen shelf or from a hop-and-potato ferment made at home, and whose ovens were wood-fired and whose kitchens went cold as soon as the fire died — hence the blanket, the stone jar, and the anxious attention to what time in the evening the sponge is set. Commercially produced compressed yeast was becoming available in American cities during exactly these years, and the shift it caused is visible in later cookbooks, where the overnight sponge shrinks to a brief proofing step. The remark that milk bread lacks "the sweet taste of the wheat" and keeps less well is an accurate observation about a long-fermented water dough, which develops flavor from the ferment itself rather than from enrichment.