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Yorkshire Brown Bread
Mix three pounds of best flour with one pound of coarse broad bran. A pound of rye flour may also be added, if approved. Make a hollow in the centre of the flour, but do not quite touch the bottom of the bowl, and sprinkle a little salt round the edge of the flour. Mix an ounce of fresh German yeast smoothly with a little more than half a pint of tepid water. Pour a cupful of tepid water into the hole in the flour, mix with it as much flour from the sides as will make a thin batter, and add the yeast. Sprinkle flour over the top, throw a cloth over the bowl, and let it stand near the fire till the yeast rises in bubbles through the flour on the surface. Knead the bread thoroughly, adding lukewarm water as required, and continue to knead without ceasing till it does not stick to the fingers and the sides of the bowl. Cut it across with a knife, throw a cloth over it, and let it stand near the fire or in a warm place until it is well risen and the surface is slightly cracked. Grease some tins, three-parts fill them with the dough, let the loaves rise in the tins for a few minutes, prick them with a fork, and bake in a moderate oven. If they are put into a brisk oven, the bread will not be baked through. Brown loaves require more water and longer baking than white bread. If liked, a smaller proportion of bran may be used with the flour; or rye flour only may be used.
A sponge-and-dough brown loaf from the era when bran was bought separately and stirred back into white flour. The instructions are sound; only the yeast, the oven and the doneness test need translating.
- German yeastThis is fresh compressed baker's yeast, sold in a moist cake and still available in some shops. One ounce is about 28 g, which corresponds to roughly 14 g active dry or 9 g instant yeast. Dry yeast can be stirred straight into the tepid water in the same way.
- The flour and branThree pounds of white flour plus one pound of coarse bran is a very high bran ratio by modern standards, closer to a bran loaf than a wholemeal one. Plain bread flour and the coarse miller's bran sold for baking will reproduce it; if you want a lighter crumb, the book itself allows a smaller proportion of bran, without saying how much.
- "Moderate oven"350-375F (175-190C). The warning against a brisk oven is the key instruction here: bran-heavy dough is wet and dense, and a 450F oven sets the crust long before the middle is cooked.
- HydrationThe line about brown loaves needing more water is the other thing to hold onto. Bran absorbs a great deal of liquid, and the dough should feel slack and tacky at the start of kneading, firming only as the gluten develops. Resist adding flour to fix stickiness.
- The sponge stageMixing a thin batter in the well and waiting for it to bubble up through the dusting of flour is a sponge, and it does two jobs: it proves the yeast is alive and it gives the bran time to soften. Allow 20-40 minutes in a warm kitchen.
- Cutting it acrossThe recipe has you slash the kneaded dough with a knife before the rise, and the book's own sign of readiness is that the surface is well risen and slightly cracked. The cut does no harm; nor does the pricking with a fork before baking.
- Baking time and donenessNothing is given. Loaves of about 1.5 lb take 40-55 minutes at 375F. Judge by an internal temperature of 200-210F rather than the tapped-bottom test, which is unreliable in a heavy bran loaf.
- YieldFour pounds of flour and bran, or five with the rye, makes roughly three 2 lb loaves or four smaller ones. Filling the tins three-parts full is the right guide, since bran dough rises less in the oven than white.
Brown bread in nineteenth-century Britain often meant white flour with bran added back rather than a true wholemeal, the bran having been separated out in milling and sold on. "German yeast" was the usual name for the imported compressed fresh yeast that reached Britain in quantity in the second half of the nineteenth century; before it, English bakers depended on brewer's barm, which was variable and often bitter, and a cleaner, more reliable yeast is one reason recipes of this period can specify an exact ounce. The sponge method described here, with a well of batter left to bubble up through the flour, is older still, and it let a cook confirm the yeast was working before committing four pounds of flour to it.