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Dry Yeast Bread
3 quarts Five Roses flour 1 tablespoon salt 4 cups lukewarm water 1 dry yeast cake.
Method:
Let the yeast cake dissolve in ¼ cup lukewarm water for about 10 minutes.
Put the salt into mixing pan, add enough water and enough flour to make a stiff batter (about the consistency of pancake mixture). Add yeast and beat 2 or 3 minutes. Set in warm place to rise over-night. In the morning, sponge should be twice its size. Add enough flour to make dough stiff enough not to stick to hands or board.
After flour is mixed in, turn out on board and knead 2 or 3 minutes. Let rise again and put in pans. Cover well and let rise to 2 times its size. Bake in moderate oven until it is nicely browned and feels light when taken out.
This is a long-sponge white bread of the kind almost every North American household baked before the 1940s: a slack batter left overnight, stiffened with flour in the morning. The method still works, but the yeast, the measurements and the oven all need translating.
- The dry yeast cakeA "dry yeast cake" of this period was a dried cake, usually bound with cornmeal or similar, and considerably less active than modern yeast; there is no reliable fixed modern equivalent. For an overnight sponge at room temperature, about 1 teaspoon of instant or active dry yeast is a sensible starting point, as a full modern packet may overproof the sponge by morning.
- Flour quantityThree quarts of flour is about 12 cups, roughly 3¼ to 3½ lb. Hold back the last 2 cups and add only what the dough needs — Five Roses was a hard-wheat flour and modern all-purpose absorbs slightly differently.
- Lukewarm means lukewarmAround 100°F, close to body temperature. Water that feels hot to the touch, well above that, will kill a good part of the yeast, and this recipe has no second chance built into it.
- The stiff batter stageMix salt, most of the 4 cups of water and enough flour to make a pancake-batter consistency — about 5 to 6 cups. This is the sponge; the remaining flour goes in the next morning.
- KneadingTwo or three minutes seems short by modern standards, and it is, but the overnight sponge has already done most of the gluten development. Knead until the dough is smooth and springs back, which will usually take 5 minutes or so by hand.
- Moderate oven350 to 375°F. Loaves in standard 9x5 pans take 35 to 45 minutes; the "feels light" test is sound, and an internal temperature of 190 to 200°F confirms it.
- YieldThree good-sized loaves, or four smaller ones. Divide the dough evenly by weight before the final rise.
- Timing the overnight riseThe recipe says to set the sponge in a warm place, which suited a sluggish dry yeast cake. With modern yeast a cooler kitchen, around 65 to 68°F over 8 to 10 hours, will usually serve better; in a warm modern house the sponge can collapse and sour before morning, in which case start it later in the evening or use less yeast.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal and distributed in enormous numbers to Canadian households buying its flour — a promotional cookbook that is often said to have served, for a generation, as a standard kitchen reference in much of the country. The choice of yeast governed the whole schedule of the baking day. Dry yeast cakes, sold shelf-stable and rehydrated before use, suited rural households far from a grocer with fresh compressed yeast, but they were slow, which is why this loaf is built on an overnight sponge rather than a same-day rise. The technique of setting a batter to ferment at night and finishing the dough at dawn is much older than the packaged yeast trade; it is the ordinary rhythm of household bread going back centuries, and packaged yeast simply made it more reliable rather than replacing it.