Bread: Scald
Scald 1 cupful milk; when lukewarm, dissolve the yeast cake in it. Beat in 1 cupful flour and let the sponge rise till light; add the rest of the milk with 4 cupfuls flour, beat again and allow it to rise. Then add the butter, sugar, cinnamon, salt, and the egg beaten to a froth, also the remainder of the flour. Mix and knead on a floured baking board .
Cover and raise. Roll the dough into coils about an inch and a half thick and twelve inches long. Braid them , pinch the ends together, set in a greased pan to rise, and bake in a moderate oven. Cool slightly, then brush with powdered sugar moistened with boiling water and slightly Aavored with cinnamon .
Federal Bread. 1 quart milk, 1 teaspoonful salt, 1 yeast cake, 1 tablespoonful melted butter, 3 eggs.
Scald the milk and add to it the butter and salt; when cool, pour in the dissolved yeast cake and beat in enough flour to make a dough that is softer than for bread. Pour into a shallow pan and raise over night; bake in the morning. When taken from the oven, split it shortcake fashion, butter generously, and serve hot. .
This is an excellent hot bread to make for breakfast, because , unless the weather is unusually warm, the cook will find it just in proper condition to bake when breakfast is required. Rice Bread. pound boiled rice, 2 quarts flour, yeast cake, 2 cupfuls milk, 1 teaspoonful salt, 3 teaspoonfuls sugar.
Mash the rice while hot and rub it into the flour with the tips of the fingers. Add the salt and sugar, warm milk, and dissolved yeast.
Make it into a dough just soft MRS. CURTIS'S COOKBOOK enough to handle, knead well, and bake in a shallow pan. Let it double its bulk, and bake in a hot oven.
Three yeast breads in sequence: a braided sweet loaf, an overnight batter bread, and a rice bread. All three assume compressed yeast cake and a wood- or coal-fired oven, so the leavening and the heat both need translating.
- Yeast cake to modern yeastOne yeast cake of the period is usually taken as equivalent to one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry yeast, though period cakes varied in size and strength. Dissolve it in liquid no hotter than 110F; milk scalded and then cooled to lukewarm is exactly right.
- Why scald the milkScalding was originally done to kill wild organisms and to deactivate whey proteins that slacken a dough. Pasteurised milk needs no sterilising, but heating to about 180F and cooling still gives a better crumb, so it is worth keeping.
- Oven temperaturesA moderate oven is 350F; a hot oven, as called for in the rice bread, is 425-450F. The braided loaf will take roughly 25-35 minutes at 350F and the rice bread 30-40 minutes at 425F, until the bottom sounds hollow.
- The braided loaf's missing quantitiesThe instructions call for butter, sugar, cinnamon, salt and an egg without stating amounts, and the totals for milk and flour are also open: the recipe scalds 1 cupful of milk but later calls for 'the rest of the milk,' and for 'the remainder of the flour' after the first 5 cupfuls. For a dough of roughly this size, 1/4 cup butter, 1/3 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and 1 egg are in the usual range for this style of loaf.
- Coils and braidingRopes an inch and a half thick by twelve inches will roughly double in the pan and rise further in the oven. Braid loosely; a tight braid can tear along the seams as the loaf springs.
- The sugar washPowdered sugar slaked with boiling water and cinnamon sets to a thin glaze only if the loaf is still warm, not hot. Brushed on a hot loaf it runs off; on a cold one it stays chalky.
- Federal bread's overnight riseA full quart of milk with one yeast cake, left out all night, depends on a cool kitchen. In a modern heated house the batter may over-ferment by morning; use half the yeast, or set the bowl in the refrigerator and bring it back to room temperature before baking.
- Rice bread proportionsThe rice bread's list has lost the figures for the rice and the yeast. Take it as about a pound (roughly 2 1/2 cups) of cooked rice, mashed hot so it disperses, and one yeast cake against the 2 quarts of flour. Rice makes a moist, tender, slow-staling crumb but adds no gluten, so knead thoroughly.
- YieldThe braided loaf makes one large braid; the Federal bread, built on a quart of milk, fills a large shallow pan and will serve a table of eight or so split and buttered; the rice bread, at 2 quarts of flour, makes two sizeable loaves or one very large shallow pan.
Federal bread belongs to a family of overnight batter breads that filled the gap between yeast bread and the quick breads of the baking-powder era: the cook set a slack dough before bed, and the long cool rise did the work while the kitchen fire was out. The note that it will be "in proper condition to bake when breakfast is required" is the whole point of the recipe. Rice bread has a longer and more regional history, common in the Carolina Lowcountry and in Charleston cookbooks where rice was abundant and wheat flour was not; adding cooked rice stretched expensive flour and produced a loaf that stayed moist for days. The braided, cinnamon-glazed loaf that opens this group is the standard American rendering of Central European sweet yeast bread, brought over by German and Scandinavian bakers and often said to have gone by the name coffee bread or coffee cake.