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Potato Yeast Bread
FIRST PRIZE FALL FAIR I took 1st prize for my bread at the Fall Fair this year, also for plain biscuits.
At noon when getting dinner, pour the potato water over 2 tablespoons of Five Roses flour, 1 tablespoon salt, 1 tablespoon sugar. Add 2 boiled potatoes mashed and 1 dipper boiling water. Put this aside until it cools. Then I add 1 yeast cake which has been soaked for 20 minutes in a cup of lukewarm water, and stir well for 2 minutes. Then I cover it and set aside in a moderately warm place until 10 o'clock at night.
Put into bread tray 3 sifters Five Roses flour and pour the first mixture into it. Then work in all the flour for 20 minutes or more until it will not stick to the hands. Then cover up tight and warm.
At 5 o'clock in the morning it is ready to mix down. Then cover up again for 1 hour. Form into loaves and set to rise for 1 hour. Then bake 1 hour in moderately hot oven. -Mrs. Andrew Henderson, Seaforth, Ont.
A prize-winning cottage loaf built on a potato sponge set at noon and baked the next morning. Most of the work is waiting, but the measurements are household ones rather than standard, so read the volumes carefully before starting.
- The vague measuresA "dipper" was whatever ladle hung by the water pail and a "sifter" was the capacity of the cook's own flour sieve; both varied from kitchen to kitchen and neither can be converted honestly. Treat the sponge as a batter you can pour and add flour to it by feel until the dough is firm and no longer tacky.
- Potato waterThe liquid the potatoes were boiled in, used still hot. Its starch and warmth feed the yeast and are traditionally credited with a soft crumb and better keeping quality. The recipe does not say how much to use; the potatoes here are also mashed and added, along with a dipper of boiling water.
- Yeast cakeA cake of compressed fresh yeast, sold in sizes that were not standardised. One 2 1/4 teaspoon packet of active dry yeast, softened in a cup of lukewarm water as the recipe directs, stands in for it. The overnight ferment is long, so do not increase the quantity.
- Cool before the yeast goes inThe hinge of the whole recipe. The mixture is scalded with boiling water and must come down to lukewarm, under about 110F, before the yeast is stirred in, or the yeast dies and nothing rises overnight.
- Moderately hot ovenAbout 375F to 400F. An hour at that heat suits large loaves; smaller tins will be done in 35 to 45 minutes. Bread is baked through at an internal temperature of 200F to 210F and should sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.
- The 20-minute kneadBy hand this is right for the flour volume involved; in a stand mixer with a dough hook, 8 to 10 minutes on medium-low gets to the same place. The dough should clear the sides of the bowl and pass a windowpane test.
- Overnight timingSet at noon, sponge ferments to 10 p.m., dough rests until 5 a.m. In a modern kitchen at 70F that first dough rise will run faster than intended. A cool room or the refrigerator keeps it from over-proofing and going sour.
- YieldThree sifters of flour is a large batch, but since a sifter's capacity is unknown the loaf count cannot be fixed; expect several loaves. Halve everything for a first attempt.
The Five Roses Cook Book was assembled by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company from recipes sent in by Canadian housewives, and this entry is a good specimen of the form: a named contributor from a small Ontario town, a mention of her fall fair prize, and instructions given in the vessels of her own kitchen rather than in standard cups. Potato yeast bread belongs to a long tradition of using the starchy potato cooking water as yeast food, a practice that predates reliable commercial yeast and persisted well after it because bakers found the loaf stayed moist longer. The clock-driven schedule, noon to ten at night to five in the morning, reflects a household where someone was always present and the kitchen stove was always warm; the recipe assumes bread-making is fitted around the day's other cooking rather than planned for its own sake.