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Compressed Yeast Recipe (Over Night)
1 cake compressed yeast 2 quarts water 6 quarts sifted Five Roses flour 2 tablespoonfuls lard or butter, melted 2 tablespoonfuls sugar 2 tablespoonfuls salt.
Dissolve yeast and sugar in the water, which should be lukewarm in winter and cool in summer, add 2 tablespoonfuls lard or butter, and half the flour. Beat until smooth, then add balance of the flour, or enough to make moderately firm dough, and lastly, the salt. Knead until smooth and elastic. Place in well-greased bowl and cover. Set aside to rise over night, or about 9 hours. In the morning mould into loaves. Fill well-greased pans half full, cover and let rise until light, or until loaves have doubled in bulk, which will be in about 1 hours. Bake 40 to 50 minutes.
This will make 6 large loaves.
If this quantity of bread is not needed, the recipe can be divided very easily by taking just half of the ingredients called for above, as well as half the cake of yeast.
The half cake of yeast, which you have left over, can be kept in good condition several days by re-wrapping it in the tinfoil and keeping it in a cool, dry place.
A full baker's batch scaled for a household that ate bread at every meal. The proportions are sound; the only real obstacles are the vessel size and the vanished yeast format.
- Scale firstSix quarts of sifted flour is roughly 6 lb, and the finished dough will weigh somewhere around 10 to 11 lb. Halving it, as the recipe suggests, gives three loaves and still fills a large mixing bowl; quartering it is more realistic for one oven.
- Compressed yeastCake sizes were not standardized; modern fresh yeast comes in 0.6 oz cubes, roughly equivalent to one 2 1/4-teaspoon packet of active dry yeast, but the cake called for here may well have been larger. Fresh cake yeast can still be found in some supermarkets; if using dry, add it to the sweetened water and let it stand a few minutes before proceeding.
- Water temperature"Lukewarm in winter and cool in summer" is a deliberate instruction, not vagueness. The dough must ferment for nine hours without over-rising, so aim for about 80F in a cold kitchen and 65-70F in a warm one.
- Salt goes in lastSalt is added after the flour on purpose: direct contact with a small quantity of yeast slows it, and this batch is relying on a modest amount of yeast to work slowly all night. Keep the order.
- Flour is not standardized"Enough to make moderately firm dough" is the operative measure. Absorbency varies between flours and between bags, so hold back a cup or two of the second addition and judge by feel.
- Oven heatThe book gives no temperature because it assumed a wood or coal range. Bake at 400F for the 40 to 50 minutes given; loaves should read about 200F internally and sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.
- Second rise"About 1 hours" is a printing slip for one hour or one and a half. Go by the visual cue the recipe supplies instead: pans filled half full, risen until doubled and just crowning the rim.
- Storing the cut cakeHalf a cake rewrapped in foil keeps a few days in a cool place, as stated, but a modern refrigerator is better, and fresh yeast fails without much warning. If in doubt, proof a pinch in sweetened warm water before committing 6 lb of flour to it.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and distributed to Canadian households that bought its flour, which is why the flour is named in the ingredient list and no substitute is contemplated. Recipes like this one belong to the moment when compressed yeast, sold in foil-wrapped cakes by grocers and bakers, was displacing the homemade liquid ferments and salt-rising starters of the previous century: the yeast is reliable enough that the book can promise six loaves from a single overnight rise, and the instructions on rewrapping the leftover half-cake show that a cake was more than a single baking required. The overnight sponge-free method itself, mixing a stiff dough at night and shaping it at dawn, put the long fermentation into the hours when no one was working.