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Bread for Fruit Toast
At noon put to soak one cake of yeast in one-half pint lukewarm water and when thoroughly dissolved stir with it sufficient flour to thicken well into rather a stiff batter. Let rise till just before "bed time." Then add one quart and a half-pint lukewarm milk (or one five-cent can evaporated cream diluted to equal above quantity); one heaping tablespoon shortening; one dessertspoon salt; three-fourths cup sugar and flour to make a moderately stiff bread dough (as if for last working). Work just a little, then set to rise (covered) in place free from draughts. This will be ready to make up by about six o'clock next morning (depending somewhat of course upon the temperature). Work out into individual loaves and set to rise again. Bake three-quarters of an hour. Have oven at moderate temperature at first, then increase the heat as the loaves come up. This will make four "brick loaves."
To each loaf may be added one and a half cups of chopped nuts (preferably peanuts), but the nut bread must not be allowed to become stale or rancid. Served with fruit and the fruit juice this combination gives an excellent proportion of the food values required by the body for nourishment and in sufficient quantity is of itself a good luncheon or breakfast.
A large enriched overnight sponge dough, written for a household that baked four loaves at a time. The quantities are workable as written, but the units and the oven directions need translating.
- The measuresHalf a pint of water is 1 cup; a quart and a half-pint of milk is 5 cups. A dessertspoon is 2 teaspoons, which is light on salt by modern standards for a dough of this size. Flour is added by feel here; expect to need a great deal of it, very roughly 14 to 18 cups, to reach a moderately stiff dough.
- One cake of yeastThe recipe does not specify the type. If compressed, a cake ran about 0.6 oz, roughly equivalent to one 1/4-oz packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry yeast, though period yeast cakes varied in size and strength. Dissolve it in the lukewarm water as directed; the sponge stage does the work of proofing it.
- Evaporated creamThe "five-cent can" is evaporated milk, not cream in the modern sense. Any 12-oz can diluted with water to make 5 cups of liquid gives the intended richness.
- The overnight timingNoon sponge, bedtime mix, six o'clock shaping assumes a cool early-twentieth-century kitchen. In a modern house held at 70F or above the dough will overproof well before morning; a cooler room, or the refrigerator overnight, keeps it in range.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe asks for moderate heat at first, then more heat as the loaves come up, a way of managing an oven controlled by fuel rather than a thermostat. Bake at a steady 375F instead. Three-quarters of an hour is right for large loaves; check the internal temperature at 190-200F rather than trusting the clock.
- Brick loavesA brick loaf is the ordinary rectangular pan loaf. The recipe gives no pan size; four 9x5-inch pans is a reasonable modern equivalent, filled about two-thirds before the final rise.
- The nut versionA cup and a half of chopped peanuts per loaf is a great deal — closer to half that gives a sliceable crumb. The warning about rancidity is sound: peanut oil goes off quickly, so use fresh nuts and eat nut loaves within a couple of days or freeze them.
- YieldFour full-size loaves. Halve everything if you only want two; the sponge method scales down without trouble.
This is a foundation recipe rather than a fruit recipe proper. Bread baked deliberately for toasting under stewed or fresh fruit belongs to a strand of early-twentieth-century American food writing that treated fruit as the basis of a light, health-minded meal, an idea often associated with sanitarium cookery and the breakfast-food industry. The closing line about "an excellent proportion of the food values required by the body" is the tell: this is the language of the new nutrition science of the 1890s and 1900s, when calories and proportions of protein, fat and carbohydrate first entered domestic cookbooks. The "five-cent can" of evaporated cream dates it too, to a period when canned milk was cheap, shelf-stable and increasingly common in kitchens without reliable refrigeration.