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Rye Bread
Mix one quart of milk, one quart of warm water, one-half cup of lard or butter, one yeast cake, one tablespoon of salt, one-third cup of sugar. After this is well mixed, add rye flour until it is as stiff as you can stir with an iron spoon. When light mold into loaves, using wheat flour for this purpose. Let it rise the second time in the tins until sufficiently light to bake. This bread is better not to rise too much and do not have too hot an oven. - Mrs Brewer.
A large, plain household loaf with no weights, no oven setting and no baking time — all of which have to be supplied. The two warnings at the end are the important part: rye dough is easy to overproof and easy to scorch.
- YieldTwo quarts of liquid plus the flour it will carry makes roughly 10-12 lb of dough — four large loaves or five smaller ones. Halve or quarter the recipe unless you are baking for a household.
- One yeast cakeA compressed cake of the period was small, on the order of half an ounce to two ounces depending on the maker; the recipe does not say which kind is meant. As a working substitute use 2¼ teaspoons (one packet) of active dry or instant yeast per cake. Older yeast was less reliable, which is part of why the rises here are described by look rather than by clock.
- Liquid temperature"Warm water" means blood-warm, about 100-110F. The quart of milk should be brought to the same temperature and no hotter; if you scald it first, cool it before it meets the yeast.
- Lard or butterHalf a cup of either works, melted or very soft. Lard gives a softer, longer-keeping crumb; butter gives more flavour and a slightly firmer loaf. The recipe leaves the choice open.
- "As stiff as you can stir with an iron spoon"This is a wet dough by modern standards — stirred, not kneaded, at this stage. Rye has little gluten-forming protein and a great deal of pentosan gum, so it stays sticky and slack however much you work it. Expect a batter-like mass rather than a smooth ball.
- Wheat flour for moldingNot a garnish or a dusting habit — the wheat flour worked in during shaping is what gives the loaf enough gluten structure to hold a dome. A dough of rye alone will spread. Use bread flour and add it as needed to make the mass handleable.
- Do not let it rise too muchThe hinge of the recipe. Rye's weak structure collapses once the gas outruns it, and an overproofed loaf falls in the oven and bakes dense and gummy. Take the tins to the oven when the dough has risen by about half, not doubled — a light press should spring back slowly but still spring back.
- "Not too hot an oven"The recipe gives no setting; a moderate oven, around 350F, suits the instruction. Rye contains more free sugars than wheat and browns fast, and a hot oven sets a dark crust before the centre is done. Bake large loaves roughly 45-55 minutes, to an internal temperature of about 200-205F.
- CoolingRye finishes setting as it cools, and its starches stay tacky while warm. Let the loaves cool completely — several hours — before slicing, or the crumb will smear on the knife.
Rye was the everyday bread grain across northern and eastern Europe long before it was a specialty item, and American rye breads of this sort owe most to German, Scandinavian and Central European households — though rye was also familiar in early New England, where it was commonly mixed with cornmeal. What Mrs Brewer records is a domesticated version: rye softened with milk, sugar and lard, and stiffened with wheat flour at the shaping stage, which produces a milder, paler loaf than the dense sour ryes of the old country. Note that there is no sourdough starter here — compressed yeast was widely available by the late nineteenth century, and in home baking of this kind it had largely taken the place of the slow rye sours that traditionally supplied both leavening and the acidity that keeps rye crumb from turning sticky. Recipes gathered and signed in this way carry the contributor's name as their whole authority: this is how it worked in one woman's kitchen, with her oven and her flour, and the reader is expected to supply the rest.