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Flour Mixtures Continued: Bread and Other Yeast Mixtures: Loaf
STORING BREAD Cool the bread when taken from the oven on a wire rack. When perfectly cold --after several hours -- set aside in a stone jar with a cover. If cut slices are kept in the jar with the loaf, do not toss them from the bread tray into the jar, lay them in carefully, to avoid crumbs. Wash, scald and air the jar once a week in cold weather, two or three times a week in summer. ONE LOAF OF WHITE BREAD (Mixed at night) 1 cup of liquid (milk or water 1/4 cake of compressed yeast or part of each) With 1/4 cup of liquid 1 tablespoonful of shortening About 4 cups of white bread 1 tablespoonful of sugar flour 1/2 teaspoonful of salt If milk be used, scald it, then let cool to a lukewarm temperature. Let boil and cool the water. Add the butter, salt and sugar to the hot liquid. Mix the piece of yeast cake with the quantity of liquid designated. Add this to the other liquid ingredients, when all are at the proper temperature. Then stir in about four cups of white flour. When all the ingredients are thoroughly mixed together and the sides of the bowl are free from dough, turn the mass onto a board lightly dredged with flour; knead until the dough is elastic and tiny white blisters are seen on the surface, then return to the bowl, cover closely, to avoid the formation of a crust, and let stand out of a draft until morning. The temperature for the first two or three hours should be about 70 deg F. After this time, fermentation (growth and reproduction of the yeast plants) being well established, the temperature may be lowered to 40 deg or 50 deg F. without disturbance to the process. In the morning the dough should have "doubled in bulk." If so, repeatedly cut through and turn it over with a knife, to let out the gas. The dough may be covered again and left until it is again doubled in bulk, or it may be shaped into a loaf at once. ONE LOAF OF WHITE BREAD (Mixed in the morning) 1 cup of liquid milk or 1 cake of compressed yeast water, or part of each mixed with 1/4 cup of 1 tablespoonful of shortening liquid 1/2 teaspoonful of salt About 4 cups of flour 1 tablespoonful of sugar ENTIRE WHEAT BREAD Follow one of the preceding recipes, using white and entire wheat flour, two cups of each, or one cup of white and three of entire wheat. NOISETTE BREAD 1 cake of compressed yeast 1 cup of noisette or filbert 1/4 cup of lukewarm water meats 1 cup of scalded-and-cooled 1/2 cup of white flour milk Entire wheat flour as needed 1 tablespoonful of shortening for dough 2 tablespoonfuls of molasses Prepare as ordinary bread, adding the nut meats, whole, to the liquid. PARKER HOUSE ROLLS Sponge 2 cups of bread flour 1 cup of milk, scalded and When sponge is light add cooled to lukewarm tem- 1/2 teaspoonful of salt perature 1 tablespoonful of sugar 1 cake of compressed yeast 1/4 cup of melted shortening 1/4 cup of scalded-and-cooled 1 3/4 to 2 cups of bread flour milk Soften the yeast in the fourth cup of milk; add to the cup of milk, stir in the flour with a spoon, then beat the mixture until very smooth. Cover it with a plate and let stand in a temperature of about 70 deg F. until light and puffy, then add the salt, sugar, shortening and flour and mix to a smooth dough. Turn on to a floured board and knead until elastic and the surface shows tiny blisters; cover closely and let stand until doubled in bulk. Turn on to a lightly-floured board, crust or upper side down, roll into a half-inch thick sheet with the rolling pin, cut into rounds, brush over one-half of each round with melted butter and fold the other half over the buttered half. Set close together in a buttered pan. When again doubled in bulk bake about half an hour; glaze during the last of the baking. One-fourth a cake of compressed yeast may be used at night for a loaf of bread, and in the morning the rest of the cake for these rolls.
A tidy set of single-loaf formulas from a book built around small households, written when yeast came in a cake and ovens had no dials. The quantities work; the missing pieces are temperature and time in the oven.
- The yeast cakeA standard compressed (fresh) yeast cake of the period was about 0.6 oz, which converts to one packet of active dry or instant yeast, roughly 2 1/4 teaspoons. The overnight loaf uses a quarter of that, so about 1/2 teaspoon of dry yeast; the morning loaf and the rolls use a full cake. Larger 2 oz cakes were also sold, so if a recipe of this era ever seems wildly overyeasted, that is why.
- Softening the yeastThe 1/4 cup of liquid held back to dissolve the yeast should be lukewarm, not hot. Instant yeast can simply be mixed into the flour, in which case add that quarter cup to the main liquid.
- Flour by feelFour cups of flour to one and a quarter cups of liquid (the cup plus the quarter cup used for the yeast) is a fairly stiff dough by modern standards. Hold back the last half cup and add only what the dough needs.
- Oven heat, which the book omitsBake this size loaf at 400F for 35 to 40 minutes, until the internal temperature reaches 195-205F. The Parker House rolls need only about 375-400F for 15 to 20 minutes rather than the half hour given.
- "Glaze during the last of the baking"The recipe does not say with what; brushing the rolls with melted butter or milk a few minutes before they come out is the usual reading.
- The cold overnight riseDropping to 40-50F after two or three hours means an unheated room or cold pantry, and it works on the same principle as a modern refrigerator retard: it slows the yeast while flavour develops. A fridge runs colder still, so let the dough come back toward room temperature before shaping.
- Scalding the milkScalding once deactivated whey proteins that weakened gluten in raw milk. Pasteurised milk needs no scalding, though warming it to lukewarm still helps the dough start.
- Noisette breadNoisette and filbert both mean hazelnut. A cup of whole nut meats in a loaf this size is generous; toast and skin them first, and expect a dense, molasses-darkened wheat loaf.
- Storing itThe stone jar is a bread crock, and the weekly scalding is mould control in a kitchen without refrigeration. A bread box or a paper bag does the same work; do not refrigerate a lean loaf, which stales fastest just above freezing. Freeze what you will not eat in two days.
- YieldEach formula makes one loaf, on the order of a pound and a half, or roughly a dozen to fifteen Parker House rolls.
Parker House rolls are traditionally traced to the Parker House hotel in Boston, opened in the 1850s, and the folded-over shape with butter brushed inside the crease is what makes the name stick rather than any particular dough. Their appearance here, alongside two versions of a single white loaf, shows what this book is for: it belongs to the domestic-science movement of the early twentieth century, which took the standard housekeeping repertoire and scaled it down for the small household. The insistence on stated temperatures -- 70F for the first hours, 40 to 50F afterward -- and the parenthetical explanation of fermentation as "growth and reproduction of the yeast plants" mark the same movement's conviction that cooking was applied science, taught with reasons attached. The one thing the author does not give is an oven temperature.