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Flour Mixtures Continued: Bread and Other Yeast Mixtures: White
KAISER SEMMELN For sponge 2 cups of boiled water 1 cake of compressed yeast 1 teaspoonful of salt 1/4 cup of lukewarm water Between 6 and 7 cups of flour About 3/4 cup of flour White of 1 egg or less Soften the yeast in the lukewarm water, mix thoroughly, then stir in the flour; knead the little ball of dough until it is smooth and elastic. Make a deep cut across the dough in both directions (see illustration page 297). Have the boiled water cooled to a lukewarm temperature and into this put the ball of dough. It will sink to the bottom of the dish, but will gradually rise as it becomes light. In about fifteen minutes it will float upon the water, a light, puffy "sponge." Into this water and sponge stir the salt and between six and seven cups of flour. Knead or pound the dough about twenty minutes. Let rise in a temperature of about 70 deg F., until the mass is doubled in bulk. Divide into pieces weighing about three ounces each (there should be about fourteen pieces). Shape these into balls. When all are shaped, with a sharp knife cut down into each, to make five divisions. Set the balls into buttered tins, some distance apart, brush over the tops generously with melted butter, and set to bake at once in a hot oven. Bake twenty or twenty-five minutes. When nearly baked, brush over with the beaten white of an egg, and return to the oven to finish baking. Bake the biscuit as soon as they are cut and brushed with butter. Only by this means can the shape and fine texture of this form of bread be secured. This recipe is said, by those who have eaten the bread in Vienna, to give a near approach to this justly famous Vienna bread. The Hungarian wheat used in Vienna makes a difference in flavor, which cannot be exactly duplicated in this country.
LADY - FINGER ROLLS For Sponge Yolks of 2 eggs 1 cup of scalded-and-cooled 1/2 teaspoonful of salt milk 2 or 3 tablespoonfuls of melted 1 cake of compressed yeast butter 1/4 cup of scalded-and- 1 tablespoonful of sugar cooled milk About 2 cups of bread flour About 1 1/2 cups of bread White of 1 egg for glazing flour When sponge is light, add Prepare the sponge in the usual manner, beating it for some minutes. When light and puffy add the other ingredients and knead fifteen or twenty minutes. Cover and set aside to double in bulk. Divide the risen dough into pieces of two ounces each (about half a cup of dough weighs two ounces). Knead these into balls and dispose on a board dredged lightly with flour; cover closely with a board or pan, and leave them to become light. Roll on the balls on the board under the fingers, to make long rolls pointed at the ends. Using more pressure on the dough at the ends than in the middle will give the desired shape. Set the rolls on a buttered sheet, some distance apart. When light, with a pair of scissors make three transverse cuts in the top of each roll. Bake about twenty minutes. When nearly baked, brush over with white of egg, and return to the oven to dry the egg.
BREAD STICKS 1 cup of scalded-and-cooled 1/2 tablespoonful of sugar milk 1/2 teaspoonful of salt 1/4 to 1 whole cake of com- 1 tablespoonful of melted but- pressed yeast ter 1/4 cup of lukewarm water 1 white of egg, beaten light About 1 1/2 cups of bread flour Flour for soft dough Make a "sponge" with the first four ingredients and when light add the rest of the materials. Knead until elastic. Cover and let rise until the bulk is doubled. Pull off small pieces of dough and knead into balls; cover on a floured board; when light roll under the hands, on the board, into pencil shapes of a length to fit a bread stick pan. Bake when light. Brush over with slightly beaten white of egg and return to the oven to set the glaze. TOAST Cut stale bread in slices of uniform thickness (scant half inch), set on a toaster some distance from the source of heat, turn occasionally to dry out the moisture, then set nearer the heat and color first on one side and then on the other. If moist toast is desired, dip the edges of the toast in boiling, salted water, set on a plate and drop on to it bits of butter. For cream toast, dip the slices in cream sauce, then set onto a plate. SANDWICHES Cut the bread in uniform slices, less thick than for toast. Trim off the crusts, if desired, then spread with butter or with such preparation as is desired, nearly to the edge of the bread on all sides. Press two pieces together and serve as soon as convenient. If the sandwiches are to stand, cover closely with an earthen bowl.
Three yeast roll recipes plus notes on toast and sandwiches, all written for a household that bought yeast in wrapped cakes and baked in a coal range. The Kaiser Semmeln is the substantial one, and its floating-sponge method is the part worth getting right.
- Compressed yeastA cake of compressed yeast was roughly 0.6 oz of fresh cake yeast, though cake sizes varied. Substitute one 1/4-oz packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry or instant yeast per cake. The bread stick recipe's "1/4 to 1 whole cake" looks like a rise-time dial rather than a precision measure: less yeast, longer and cooler fermentation.
- The floating spongeThe hinge of the Kaiser Semmeln. A small stiff ball of dough is slashed crosswise and dropped into two cups of lukewarm water; as it ferments it becomes buoyant and rises to the surface, at which point the whole thing (water and all) becomes the liquid for the main dough. Keep the water lukewarm, around 100F; water hot enough to kill the yeast will leave the ball sitting on the bottom.
- Oven temperature"A hot oven" in books of this period is usually taken as somewhere around 400-450F. The rolls go in immediately after cutting and buttering, without a final proof in the tin, so they need a brisk heat to spring open along the cuts.
- Bake the semmeln at onceThe instruction to bake as soon as the balls are cut and brushed is repeated for a reason. If the cut rolls are left to proof, the divisions relax and close and the characteristic five-petal top flattens out.
- Flour amounts"Between 6 and 7 cups" is roughly 750-875 g. Hold back the last cup and add it as needed rather than committing to it.
- The garbled columnThe Lady-Finger Rolls ingredients were printed in two columns and have run together in this transcription. Read it as a sponge of 1 cup scalded-and-cooled milk, 1 cake yeast, 1/4 cup scalded-and-cooled milk, and about 1 1/2 cups bread flour; then, when light, add 2 egg yolks, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 2-3 tablespoons melted butter, 1 tablespoon sugar, about 2 more cups bread flour, and reserve 1 egg white for glazing.
- Egg-white glazeBrushing raw white onto a roll that is already nearly baked and then returning it to the oven sets a hard, glossy shell. Only a few minutes is needed; left longer the glaze browns and dulls.
- YieldThe Kaiser Semmeln gives about fourteen 3-oz rolls, as the recipe states. No yield is given for the lady-fingers; at 2 oz a piece the dough would make roughly a dozen or more.
- Toast and sandwiches"A toaster" means a wire frame or rack holding the bread before or above the heat -- an open fire or grate, or the top of a range -- which is why the method starts far from the heat to dry the slice, then moves close to color it. A broiler reproduces this; a pop-up toaster does not, and does not need to.
Kaisersemmeln, "emperor's rolls," are the standard Vienna breakfast roll, identified by the five-lobed pinwheel top that is either hand-folded or, as here, cut in with a knife. American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were preoccupied with "Vienna bread," whose reputation in the United States is generally traced to the Austrian bakery exhibits at the international expositions of the 1870s; the crisp, thin-crusted, glazed roll became a mark of a good table and a recurring project for domestic-science writers. The frank admission here that Hungarian wheat cannot be duplicated "in this country" is a real observation about milling and variety, not modesty: Austro-Hungarian flour of the period was famously well suited to lean, crusty rolls, and American bakers spent decades chasing it. Cooking for Two belongs to the Boston Cooking School tradition, which explains the weighed dough pieces, the specified 70F rising temperature, and the general insistence that a roll is a matter of measurement rather than instinct.