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Rye Bread
One large cup of milk, one large cup of water, a mixing spoon two-thirds full of lard, and two and a half of molasses, what salt one can hold in the hand, half a Fleischmann yeast cake; add enough flour to make a smooth batter, and let rise over night. In the morning add more flour, mix with a spoon as long as you can, then with a knife; do not make too stiff. Put in pans, let rise and bake in a moderate over, as it has to bake slower than wheat bread.
— Mrs. William Joesbury
A sponge-method rye leavened with a fraction of a commercial yeast cake, written for a cook who measured by hand and by the mixing spoon hanging over the flour barrel. The quantities are loose, but the method is sound and the proportions can be pinned down closely enough to work.
- The flour is the missing wordThe title says rye but the text only says "flour." Period rye loaves of this kind were usually a mix of rye and wheat flour, since a dough of all rye is slack and hard to shape; a half-and-half mix, or two parts wheat to one of rye, will work here, though the recipe itself does not say.
- Translating the spoonA "mixing spoon" is a large wooden serving spoon; if you take it as holding about 2 tablespoons, two-thirds full of lard is roughly 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons and two and a half spoons of molasses about 5 tablespoons. Salt "one can hold in the hand" is a cupped palm, perhaps 2 to 3 teaspoons. All of these are estimates, not fixed values.
- The yeast cakeHalf a Fleischmann cake is about 1/3 oz of fresh compressed yeast, equivalent to roughly 1 teaspoon of active dry or instant yeast. The small amount is deliberate: it is meant to work slowly through a cool night, not to double in an hour.
- A large cup"One large cup" probably means a full cup, filled to the brim rather than levelled, though the book gives no standard. Warm the milk with the water to lukewarm so the yeast starts.
- Overnight riseLet the batter stand covered at cool room temperature, around 65-68F, for 8 to 12 hours. In a modern heated kitchen at 75F it will be ready sooner and can over-ferment and sour; if your house is warm, a cooler spot will slow it down.
- "As long as you can, then with a knife"Rye dough is sticky rather than stiff, and this is the hinge of the recipe: resist adding flour until it handles like wheat dough. Cutting and folding with a knife or bench scraper keeps it from gluing to your hands without drying it out. Too stiff and the loaf bakes dense and cracks at the crust.
- Oven"Moderate" is usually read as somewhere around 350-375F, and the instruction to bake slower than wheat bread suggests keeping to the low end or below, roughly 325-350F, for 45 to 60 minutes in loaf pans. Rye holds more moisture and the molasses browns fast, so a lower temperature for longer keeps the crust from setting before the center is done; an internal temperature near 200F indicates it is baked through.
- YieldThe two cups of liquid make one large loaf or two small ones. It slices better the day after baking; rye crumb continues to set as it cools.
Rye was the everyday bread grain of the Hudson Valley and the Catskills long before wheat flour became cheap and reliable, and Dutch-settled districts kept the taste for it well into the twentieth century — often as "rye and Injun," rye stretched with cornmeal. What dates this particular receipt is the yeast: Fleischmann's compressed cake, sold from the 1870s onward and by the turn of the century distributed by wagon to village grocers, replaced the homemade hop or potato yeast that earlier cookbooks spent whole pages explaining. Half a cake and an overnight sponge is a transitional method — the modern purchased leaven used on the old slow schedule. The measurements, taken in handfuls and mixing spoons, show that community cookbooks like this one were written for neighbors who already knew what the dough should feel like; the contributor's name at the bottom was the real guarantee of the recipe.