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Dromedary Date Bread
1/2 cup milk 1/2 cup water 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon sugar 1/2 yeast cake 3 cups flour 1 package Dromedary Dates Put milk and water in mixing bowl, add salt, sugar and yeast cake, which has been dissolved in 4 tablespoons tepid water, then add flour; mix thoroughly and knead to smooth dough. Let rise to double in bulk, mix one package stoned dates with dough, shape and place in greased pan, allow to rise again, brush over with milk and bake in hot oven three-quarters of an hour.
A plain white yeast dough with dates folded in after the first rise. Two things in the original need translating before you start: the yeast cake and the "hot oven," which as written will scorch the loaf.
- Half a yeast cakeA yeast cake was usually a small block of fresh compressed yeast, commonly around 0.6 oz, so half is roughly 8 g. Substitute roughly 1 teaspoon of active dry or instant yeast, dissolved in the 4 tablespoons of tepid water as directed.
- Oven temperatureA "hot oven" in this period is usually taken as somewhere around 400-450F. Three-quarters of an hour at that heat will darken a sugary date loaf badly; 375F for 35-45 minutes suits a single loaf, and it is done at an internal temperature of about 195F.
- A package of datesThe recipe does not say what size package is meant. Around 8 oz of pitted dates to 3 cups of flour is the proportion that works; much more and the dough will not hold together.
- Flour and hydrationThree cups is about 13 oz of flour against 1 cup of liquid plus the 4 tablespoons of yeast water, which is wet by modern reckoning, so expect to work in more flour while kneading to reach the "smooth dough" the recipe asks for. Bread flour gives better structure against the weight of the fruit.
- Adding the datesFold them in after the first rise, as written, and cut or tear them rather than mashing. Whole sticky dates worked into raw dough at the start will tear the gluten and slow the rise.
- "Stoned"Simply pitted. Check bought pitted dates by hand anyway; stray stones are common.
- Milk washBrushing with milk before baking gives a soft, matte brown crust. It also browns fast, which is another reason to drop the oven from a true hot setting.
- YieldOne standard loaf in a 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch pan. Cool completely before slicing or the date pockets will drag.
Dromedary was the date brand of the Hills Brothers Company of New York, which imported and packed dates from the Middle East and North Africa and became one of the best-known American date names of the early twentieth century. Booklets like this one existed to make a case for using dates outside of confectionery, hence a recipe that treats dates as a bread fruit rather than a dessert. The dough itself is unremarkable household white bread of the period; the novelty was the packaged, pitted, ready-to-use fruit, which spared the cook the work of stoning dates by hand and gave the company something to advertise. Date bread of this kind later shifted almost entirely to chemical leavening, and the yeast-risen version here reads as the older approach.