White Bread
At noon mash two medium-sized potatoes, and add one pint of the water in which they are cooked. Moisten a cake of Larkin Dry Yeast in one-half cup of lukewarm water. To the warm potato-water, add one quart of flour and beat thoroughly in the bread-mixer. When cool, but not cold, add the yeast and let rise until morning. Add three pints of warm water, three quarts of flour, two teaspoons of Larkin Table Salt. Again beat well, and let rise, keeping the dough at an even temperature of about 87° F.
At the expiration of an hour, knead and make into loaves. Let rise until dough rebounds instantly if pressed in with the finger. For pound loaves, bake forty-five minutes; if of more weight, bake proportionately longer. When taken from the oven, rub the tops with lard to soften the crust.
A potato-water sponge bread built on an overnight ferment, written for a household that baked several loaves at a time. Two things need translating before you start: the flour-to-water ratio and the missing oven temperature.
- Hydration is the hingeAs written the recipe pairs four quarts of flour with two quarts of liquid, which by weight is close to 100 percent hydration — a batter, not a dough. The recipe gives no instruction to add more flour at the kneading stage; expect to work in another 2 to 4 cups until the dough is soft but holds a shape.
- No oven temperature is givenAssume 400-425F for one-pound loaves, dropping to 375F if the tops colour early. Forty-five minutes at that heat is about right; the reliable test is an internal temperature of 200-210F, or a hollow sound when the bottom is tapped.
- The yeastThe product name indicates a dried yeast cake rather than fresh compressed yeast. One packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of modern active dry yeast is the usual stand-in, though period dry cakes were slower and less predictable. Because the overnight sponge does the real work, a single packet for this much flour is not a misprint.
- Potato and potato waterTwo medium potatoes, mashed, with a pint of their cooking water, supply starch and nutrients that feed the yeast and help keep the crumb moist for days. Do not salt the potato water; the salt goes in with the second flour addition, after the sponge has worked.
- 87 degrees FThat figure is a proofing temperature, not an oven setting. A turned-off oven with the light on, or the top of the refrigerator, gets close enough; below about 70F the hour-long rise will take two or three.
- Bread-mixerThe original means a hand-cranked dough bucket with a paddle. A stand mixer with the paddle for the sponge and the dough hook afterward does the same job, as does a bowl and a stiff spoon.
- YieldRoughly eight pounds of dough — six to eight one-pound loaves, or four larger ones baked closer to an hour. Quarter the recipe for a two-loaf household.
- Rubbing the tops with lardAny neutral fat or butter works and does what is claimed: it traps steam at the surface so the crust stays tender rather than crackling. Skip it if you want a crisp crust.
Recipes like this one belong to the era of the overnight sponge, when bread was begun at midday, left to ferment through the night in the warmest corner of the kitchen, and kneaded into loaves before breakfast. The potato is doing real work: potato starch and the minerals in the cooking water were widely relied on to keep a slow-rising yeast lively, and potato-water breads were prized for staying soft, which mattered when a family baked once or twice a week. The named Larkin products point to the book's commercial side — cookbooks issued or underwritten by grocery and household-goods firms, with the firm's yeast, salt and extracts written directly into the instructions, were a standard form of advertising in the early twentieth century. The precise 87 degrees F is a sign of the same period's enthusiasm for domestic science: temperature, weighed loaves and timed bakes replacing the older language of a warm place and a quick oven.