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Bread with Compressed (Quick Method)
YEAST 1 cake compressed yeast (see note) 3 quarts Five Roses flour 1 tablespoon salt 2 tablespoons butter 1 quart lukewarm milk and water (or lukewarm water only) 2 tablespoons sugar.
Note-Two cakes of yeast may be used in this recipe with advantage to the bread and a saving of time.
Take the lukewarm milk and water, and put in a deep dish or pitcher. Add the yeast and sugar, and dissolve. Then take the flour (either all or part) and put in kneading pan. Add salt, mix thoroughly, and rub the butter well into the flour. Then mix in your yeast and knead to a nice soft dough that does not stick to the hands, adding more Five Roses flour if required. Let rise for about 2 or 3 hours.
Then mould into loaves. Let rise in moderately warm place, free from draughts, until they are about half as big again as when you put them in the pans, and then bake for about ¾ hour. Turn upside down when done and tap bottom. If it sounds hollow, your bread is done.
When letting rise, cover with a lid or two or three thicknesses of cloth. This is the way to make quick bread. The entire process requires about 6 hours or less.
A straightforward straight-dough white bread from the era when bread was measured by the quart and the oven had no dial. Two things are missing by modern standards: an oven temperature and a yield.
- The yeast cakeA commercial compressed yeast cake of this period was small, often in the region of 0.6 oz, though sizes varied by maker. One packet (2¼ tsp) of active dry or instant yeast is the usual substitute; the recipe's own note to use two cakes would translate to roughly a tablespoon of dry yeast, which the book says gives "a saving of time."
- QuantitiesThree quarts of flour is a volume measure, about 12 cups, or roughly 3¼–3¾ lb depending on how it is scooped. A quart of liquid is 4 cups. That is a large batch by modern standards, enough for something like three to four 9x5-inch loaves.
- Oven temperatureNone is stated because wood and coal ranges were judged by hand. A reasonable modern equivalent for loaves of this size is around 400F for the stated three-quarters of an hour.
- The doneness testThe hollow tap is reliable but a thermometer is better: a lean white loaf is done at 190-200F in the centre. Turning the loaf out of the pan to tap it, as directed, is the correct method; tapping through the pan tells you nothing.
- Lukewarm means lukewarmAround 100-110F. Hotter water was a real risk with cake yeast and still is with dry; somewhere above about 120-130F, depending on the yeast, it dies and the dough will not rise no matter how long it sits.
- Kneading and risingKnead 8-10 minutes by hand, or 6-8 in a mixer with a dough hook, to a soft dough that clears the bowl. The 2-3 hour first rise assumes a cool early-century kitchen; in a 70F room the time will be shorter, but with only one cake's worth of yeast in this much flour do not expect it to be dramatically so — judge by doubling rather than the clock.
- "Half as big again"The second rise is deliberately short of doubled, leaving spring for the oven. A loaf proofed until it sags will collapse when the crust sets.
- Covering the doughThe lid or folded cloth is there to stop a skin forming. Plastic wrap or a damp towel does the same job; a dried crust on the surface will streak the crumb.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to sell its flour, and the bread chapter is the heart of the book: home baking was central to the household economy of the 1910s, and a miller's reputation rested on how the loaves turned out. The "quick method" here is quick only by comparison with the overnight sponge, in which a little yeast worked slowly through the night. Compressed yeast — moist cake yeast sold by the ounce and perishable within days — had become widely available from commercial producers through the late nineteenth century, and it let bakers bring the work down to six hours by simply using more of it. The note offering two cakes "with advantage to the bread and a saving of time" is the whole argument for industrial yeast in a single sentence.