Bread: Make
Beat for ten minutes, cover, and set in a warm place for eight hours . Stir the salt into the milk and add enough flour to make a stiff batter before working it into the raised dough; mix thoroughly, cover, and set again in a warm place to rise until very light. Knead in enough flour to make the batter of the consistency of Make into ordinary bread dough. Make into loaves and set them to rise; when light, bake.
SMALL BREADS MADE FROM YEAST Stockholm Bread (Swedish recipe). 6½ cupfuls flour, 1 yeast cake, 2½ cupfuls scalded milk, cupful melted butter, 1 egg, cupful sugar, teaspoonful salt, teaspoonful cinnamon.
A long-sponge bread of the sort common before instant yeast, followed by the opening of a sweetened Swedish loaf. Two things need translating: the yeast and the vague "warm place."
- A yeast cakeOne compressed yeast cake of the period is roughly equivalent to one packet of active dry yeast, about 2¼ teaspoons. Compressed cake yeast is still sold in some markets but is far less common than it was.
- "A warm place"In a period kitchen this meant somewhere near the range or in a warming closet, likely warmer than a modern room, perhaps in the region of 75-80F. An eight-hour sponge at that temperature is a slow ferment that develops considerable flavour; a cooler overnight rise in the refrigerator can be substituted, though it will need longer.
- Scalded milkMilk was scalded because something in raw milk was held to weaken the gluten. With pasteurised milk the step is generally unnecessary, but the milk must still be cooled to lukewarm before it meets the yeast, since hot milk will kill it.
- Flour is not a fixed quantityThe instruction to knead in "enough flour" is the real measurement here. Period flour was softer and less consistently dry than modern bread flour, so go by feel: a dough that is smooth and only slightly tacky, not stiff.
- Baking the loavesNo temperature is given because the recipe assumes a wood range judged by hand. For an ordinary white loaf, 400F for about 35-40 minutes; the enriched Stockholm dough, with sugar and butter, browns faster and is better at 375F.
- DonenessAn internal temperature of 195-200F is a surer test than tapping the bottom, particularly with a rich, sweet dough that stays soft in the crumb.
- YieldSix and a half cupfuls of flour will give two standard loaves, or a dozen and a half small rolls or buns of the kind the "small breads" heading implies.
Bread chapters in turn-of-the-century American household manuals were built around the sponge method: a slack batter of flour, liquid and yeast left to ferment for many hours, then stiffened with more flour and salt, kneaded and shaped. The long sponge did the work that commercial yeast and dough conditioners do now, and salt was held back from the sponge because it slows fermentation. The Stockholm loaf here belongs to the section of small sweet breads that reflected Scandinavian immigration to the upper Midwest and to New England mill towns; enriched with butter, sugar, egg and cinnamon, it sits closer to the Nordic vetebr ód tradition of sweet wheat bread than to a plain family loaf.