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Bread One Loaf
One cup of milk, or water lukewarm (if milk is used, boil it, and let cool); half a teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon of sugar, one-quarter of a yeast cake dissolved in one-quarter of a cup of lukewarm water, and from three to three and a half cups of flour. Mix thoroughly with knife or spoon, when stiff enough turn on moulding board and knead twenty minutes, but do not let it get cold. By increasing the receipt you can make as many loaves as you desire.
— Miss Emily Marquit
A plain white loaf from the era when compressed yeast had just made same-day bread possible. The receipt assumes the reader already knows how long dough rises and how hot to bake it, so those are the two things worth supplying.
- The missing half of the methodThere is no rising or baking instruction at all. After kneading, cover and let rise until doubled (about 1 to 1½ hours at room temperature), shape into a greased 8x4-inch pan, prove until the dough crowns the rim (about 45 minutes), and bake at 375–400F for 30–35 minutes, to an internal temperature of 190–200F.
- A yeast cakeThis means a compressed fresh cake, not the dry granules sold today; the small commercial cake was generally around 0.6 oz, though period cakes varied in size. A quarter of one is on the order of ½ teaspoon of active dry yeast, or a scant ½ teaspoon of instant. Dissolve active dry in the quarter cup of lukewarm water as written; instant can go straight into the flour.
- Why the milk is boiledScalding raw milk was standard practice: it is usually explained as deactivating whey proteins that slacken dough, and it also dealt with bacteria in unpasteurised milk. With today's pasteurised milk most bakers simply warm it to blood heat. Cool any scalded milk to lukewarm before it meets the yeast.
- SaltHalf a teaspoon for three and a half cups of flour is well under modern practice, which runs closer to 1½ to 2 teaspoons. The loaf as written will taste flat; salt to your own preference, remembering it also slows fermentation.
- Kneading twenty minutesTwenty minutes by hand is generous even for a soft dough this small. Eight to ten minutes of brisk hand kneading, or six in a stand mixer on low, will bring it to a smooth windowpane. "Do not let it get cold" is the real point: a chilled board stalls the yeast.
- FlourThree to three and a half cups is a wide range because flour of this period varied in how much liquid it would take up. Start at three, add the rest by the spoonful, and stop when the dough is tacky but not sticky rather than when the cup is empty.
- YieldOne loaf of roughly 1½ pounds of dough, which is about what an 8x4 pan wants. The note about increasing the receipt scales by whole multiples, though the yeast can be trimmed slightly on larger batches.
This is a community cookbook receipt, contributed by name — the sort of household staple a local contributor made weekly rather than a company dish made once a year. Compressed fresh yeast, sold in cakes and kept cool, was widely available by the end of the nineteenth century and increasingly took the place of hop yeast, salt-rising and overnight sponges, though those older routines persisted in many homes well beyond that. Bread could be started in the morning and eaten at supper, and a receipt could be short. What the contributor left out — rising times, oven heat — is what an experienced cook working a wood or coal range judged by hand would already have known, and exactly what a modern reader has to be told.