Sally Lunn
Warm 1/2 cupful of butter in 1 pint of milk; add 1 teaspoonful of salt, 1 tablespoonful of sugar, and 7 cupfuls of sifted flour; beat thoroughly, and when the mixture is blood-warm add 4 beaten eggs, and, last of all, 1/2 cupful of good, lively yeast or 1/2 cake of compressed yeast dissolved in lukewarm water. Beat hard until the batter breaks in blisters. Set it to rise. In the morning dissolve a teaspoonful of soda. Stir it into the batter and turn it into a well-buttered shallow dish to rise again in about fifteen or twenty minutes. Bake about twenty minutes, until a light brown. They should be torn apart, not cut. These are often seen on Southern tables.
A yeast batter bread rather than a kneaded dough, mixed the night before and baked in the morning. The two things that decide success are the beating and the second, short rise.
- Beat until it blistersThis is the hinge. The batter is too slack to knead, so all gluten development comes from hard beating — 5 to 8 minutes with a stand mixer on medium, or a solid arm workout with a wooden spoon. When the surface tears and shows glossy bubbles as you lift the spoon, it is ready.
- Blood-warmAbout 98F. Warm the butter into the milk, then let it cool to that point before the eggs and yeast go in; hotter milk will scramble the eggs and kill the yeast.
- The yeast"Good, lively yeast" means a home-kept liquid yeast or barm, which few kitchens keep now. Compressed yeast came in cakes of more than one size, so half a cake is not a fixed weight; depending on the cake, reckon somewhere between about 1 teaspoon and one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry or instant yeast.
- Overnight riseThe recipe says only to set it to rise and to finish it in the morning. A cool place rather than a warm one suits so long a rise; in a warm kitchen the batter can over-ferment and turn sour and slack.
- Why the sodaThe teaspoon of soda stirred in at the last neutralizes the acidity a long overnight ferment produces and gives extra lift. Dissolve it in a tablespoon of warm water and fold it through gently; a dry spoonful leaves bitter yellow streaks.
- The second rise is shortFifteen to twenty minutes in the buttered dish is all it wants. The batter is already fully fermented, and a longer rise here will collapse in the oven.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Twenty minutes to light brown in a shallow dish suggests a fairly hot oven, somewhere around 375-400F; test the center with a skewer, as batter breads look done before they are.
- Vessel and yieldA shallow dish means a 9x13-inch pan or two 9-inch round cake pans, not a loaf tin. This quantity — a pint of milk and 7 cups of flour — makes a generous 12 to 16 servings.
- Torn, not cutNot sentiment. The crumb is open and moist, and a knife compresses it; pulling it apart in squares keeps the texture light.