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White Bread, Quick Method
2 cakes FLEISCHMANN'S YEAST 1 quart lukewarm water 2 tablespoonfuls sugar 2 tablespoonfuls lard or butter, melted 3 quarts sifted flour 1 tablespoonful salt THE best Bread-makers use quick methods. One cake of yeast will suffice, but two cakes produce quicker, stronger fermentation and better Bread. Dissolve yeast and sugar in lukewarm water, add lard or butter, and half the flour. Beat until smooth, then add salt and balance of the flour, or enough to make dough that can be handled. Knead until smooth and elastic, or "throw and roll" as shown on page 15. Place in greased bowl, cover and set aside in a moderately warm place, free from draught, until light--about one and one-half hours.
Mould into loaves. Place in well-greased Bread pans, filling them half full. Cover and let rise one hour, or until double in bulk. Bake forty-five to sixty minutes.
If a richer loaf is desired, use milk in place of part or all of the water.
The base recipe of the booklet, and the one most worth reading sceptically, because the only sentence on the page that is not technique is advertising.
- Two cakes where one will doThe page says plainly that one cake of yeast will suffice, then recommends two for quicker, stronger fermentation and better bread. The first half is true and the second half is a yeast company's opinion. More yeast makes bread faster, not better; a fast rise makes a blander loaf. One cake, about 2 1/4 teaspoons of active dry yeast or one 7g sachet, is right for this quantity.
- Three quarts of flourTwelve cups of flour to a quart of water, which is a far bigger batch than a modern household bakes, and no yield is stated anywhere on the page. Quartering it gives three cups of flour to one cup of water and makes a single loaf. Nothing in the method needs changing, except that the yeast comes down by the same fraction and the rise accordingly runs past the stated hour and a half, which is a gain rather than a problem.
- No oven temperature, here or anywhereThe booklet gives none because its readers judged heat without a dial. The standard equivalences are worth keeping at hand for the whole book: a moderate oven is roughly 350 to 375°F, moderately hot 375 to 400°F, hot 400 to 450°F. This loaf wants about 375°F, and bread is done at an internal temperature near 200°F. The forty-five to sixty minute window is wide because pans and ovens were not standard, not because the range is a matter of preference.
- Moderately warm, free from draughtThis is a real instruction rather than a flourish. A dough held around 75 to 78°F will keep to the book's hour and a half; a cold kitchen can double it. The times here assume a room with a range burning in it, which few kitchens now are.
- Water, with milk as an upgradeThe loaf is built on water, and milk is offered at the end for a richer one. They are not interchangeable without consequence: milk gives a softer crumb, a darker crust and a loaf that stales sooner. Water gives the plain chewy bread the recipe is actually describing. Pasteurized milk needs no scalding before use.
- The two spoonfuls of lardA small amount doing a specific job: it softens the crumb and buys the loaf a little keeping time. Butter or oil stands in for it. Leaving it out altogether gives a leaner, crustier bread closer to a hearth loaf, which is a legitimate choice and not an error.
This is the recipe the booklet was built around. Compressed yeast was Fleischmann's product, and the quick method is the argument for it: bread from start to table in about four hours, in a country where leavening had long meant keeping a ferment alive, fetching barm from a brewer, or working with salt-rising and hop yeasts that behaved differently from one week to the next. A perishable cake bought fresh from the grocer made the timing predictable, which is why this book reads less like a cookbook than like a timetable. The sentence recommending two cakes rather than one is where the commercial interest shows through the instruction, and it is the plainest line on the page.