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Yeast Wreaths
Set a pound and a half of fine flour to warm in a pan. Mix an ounce and a half of fresh dried yeast, or two large table-spoonfuls of brewer's yeast, with a cupful of lukewarm milk; stir this in the centre of the dough to a batter; cover, and leave it to rise. When it is light, add half a pound of butter beaten to a cream, three eggs, three ounces of sifted sugar, and a little salt. Work all to a smooth light dough. Divide it into six parts. Roll them on the paste-board into long bars; plait two twists of these, lay them in rings on a buttered tin, making the ends of each ring join. Set them in a warm place to rise, and, when light, brush them over with egg. Sprinkle chopped almonds and coarsely-powdered sugar over, and bake them to a nice yellow colour in a moderate oven.
An enriched sweet yeast dough, built by the sponge method and finished as plaited rings. The proportions are sound; only the yeast and the oven need translating.
- The yeast measurement is ambiguous"An ounce and a half of fresh dried yeast" conflates two products; a Victorian ounce-and-a-half almost certainly means moist compressed yeast, which corresponds to roughly a half-ounce (about 4 teaspoons) of modern active dry. If you read it as dried granular yeast at face value the dough will be badly over-yeasted and taste of it.
- Brewer's yeast is not the modern supplementThe two tablespoons of brewer's yeast called for here are live barm skimmed from fermenting beer, not the dead nutritional flakes sold under that name today. Use baker's yeast.
- How the sponge actually worksThe flour is not yet a dough at this stage. Warm the flour in a bowl, make a well in the centre, and mix the yeast and lukewarm milk into a loose batter within that well, drawing in only enough surrounding flour to thicken it. Cover and let that sponge rise until domed and bubbly, 30-45 minutes, before working in the butter, eggs and sugar.
- Weights in cupsA pound and a half of flour is about 5 1/2 cups; half a pound of butter is two sticks; three ounces of sifted sugar is a scant half cup. A cupful of milk goes into the sponge; judge the finished dough by feel.
- Butter beaten to a creamThe butter must be soft and whipped smooth before it goes in, not melted. Melted butter coats the flour rather than being worked in, and tends to give a heavier, greasier crumb.
- Moderate oven350F. A rich dough with sugar, egg wash and almonds colours fast, so watch from 20 minutes; the wreaths are done at 30-35 minutes when a skewer comes out clean and the base sounds hollow.
- YieldSix bars plaited in pairs gives three wreaths, each serving six to eight. Seal the joined ends firmly and pinch them underneath, or the ring opens as it proves.
- Coarsely-powdered sugarThis is what would now be sold as pearl or nib sugar, sugar crushed coarse enough to survive the oven. Granulated sugar dissolves into the egg wash; crushed sugar cubes are the closer substitute.
The plaited yeast ring belongs to the German and Austrian baking tradition of the Hefekranz or Butterkranz, a butter-and-egg dough braided into a crown and strewn with almonds and rough sugar, and its close relatives run from Alsace to Switzerland. Cassell's, compiled in London in the later nineteenth century, drew freely on continental confectionery of this kind. The instruction to use brewer's yeast is a reminder of how bakers got their leaven before pressed baker's yeast was widely sold: households bought barm from a brewery, and its reliability varied with whatever was fermenting that week, which is why the recipe hedges with an alternative and why the cook is told to wait until the sponge "is light" rather than given a time.