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Excellent Bread for Breakfast
1 quart of flour. Lard the size of a walnut. 1 small Irish potato, boiled and mashed fine. 1 heaping teaspoonful of salt. Half a teacup of good yeast, into which put a tablespoonful of white sugar.
Make up a soft dough with cold water in summer and milk-warm water in winter. This must be kneaded for thirty minutes, and then set to rise, in a cool place in summer, and a warm one in winter; must never be kept more than milk warm. Two hours before breakfast, make the dough into the desired shapes, handling it lightly, without kneading it, first rubbing lard over the hands, and taking especial care to grease the bread on top. Then set it to rise again. Thirty minutes are sufficient for baking it, unless it be in the form of a loaf or rolls, in which case, it must be baked fifteen minutes longer. Excellent muffins may be made by the above receipt, adding two eggs well beaten, so that from the same batch of dough both plain bread and muffins may be made.
Iron moulds are best for baking.
For those who prefer warm bread for dinner, it is a good plan to reserve a portion of the breakfast dough, setting it away in a cool place till two hours before dinner, then make into turnovers or twist, set it to rise and bake it for dinner, as for breakfast. Very nice on a cold day, and greatly preferable to warmed-over bread.--Mrs. S. T.
RECIPE FOR FAMILY BREAD. 2 quarts of flour. 2 tablespoonfuls of lard or butter. 2 teaspoonfuls of salt. Enough sponge for a two quart loaf of bread. Mix with one pint of sweet milk.
Make into rolls and bake with very little fire under the oven.--Mrs. A. C. LOAF BREAD. First make a better of the following ingredients. 1 pint of flour. 1 teaspoonful of salt. 1 teaspoonful of sugar. A cup of water. A cup of good yeast.
Set this to rise and when risen work in two pints of flour, or, if the batter is not sufficient to work up this flour, add a little water. Work it smoothly and set it to rise.
When risen, add a small piece of lard, work it well again, let it stand an hour and then bake it slowly.--Mrs. P. W.
OLD VIRGINIA LOAF BREAD. Sponge for the same.
Boil one large Irish potato, until well done, then peel and mash it fine, adding a little cold water to soften it. Stir into it 1 teaspoonful of brown sugar. 1 tablespoonful of sweet lard. Then add three tablespoonfuls of good hop yeast.
Mix the ingredients thoroughly, then put the sponge in a mug with a close-fitting top, and let it stand several hours to rise. Sift into the tray three pints of the best family flour, to which add a teaspoonful of salt. Then pour in the sponge and add enough cold water to the flour to work it up into a rather stiff dough. Knead it till the dough is smooth, then let it stand all night to rise. Work it over in the morning, using just enough flour to keep it from sticking to the hands. Allow it one hour to rise before baking and one hour to bake in a moderate oven. Then it will be thoroughly done and well dried.
Use a little lard on the hands when making out the loaf, as it keeps the crust from being too hard.--Mrs. S.
Another Recipe for Loaf Bread.
Good flour is the first requisite, and next, good yeast and sufficient kneading.
For a loaf of ordinary size, use 2 lbs. of flour. Lard the size of a hen's egg. A saltspoonful of salt. 2 gills of yeast.
Mix up these ingredients into a moderately stiff dough, using for the purpose, from three gills to a pint of water. Some flour being more adhesive than others, you have to learn by experience the exact amount of water required. Knead the dough till perfectly smooth, then set it to rise, in a cool place, in summer, but in a warm place, free from draughts, in winter. In the latter season it is better to keep a blanket wrapped around it. This amount of flour will rise to the top of a gallon and a half jar or bucket. If it is ready before time, stir it down and set it in a cooler place. When you put it in the baking-pan (in which it will be in an inch of the top, if the pan be of a suitable size for the amount of flour) cover it well, or a hard crust will form from the effects of the atmosphere. Keep it a little warmer during the second rise than during the first. When ready for baking, set it in the oven and bake it for three-quarters of an hour with a moderate fire, evenly kept up. It will then come out with out sticking, if the pans are well cared for.--Mrs. J. J. A.
Five related yeast-bread formulas from the same chapter, all written for cooks who kept a live yeast at home and judged a wood-fired oven by hand. The measurements translate cleanly enough; the leavening does not.
- "Good yeast" is not a packetThroughout these recipes yeast means a liquid barm — hop or potato yeast kept going in a jug, a common practice in Virginia kitchens — and half a teacup or two gills of it is largely water and flour, not raising power. A rough modern equivalent is about 2 teaspoons of instant yeast, with the barm's own liquid (a quarter cup or so for half a teacup) made up in the dough water, or a well-fed sourdough starter at a similar volume.
- A quart of flourFlour was measured by volume: a quart is 4 cups, roughly 16-18 oz depending on how lightly the soft Southern flour was sifted. Two pounds in the last recipe works out somewhere around 7 to 8 cups. Southern family flour was low-protein, closer to modern all-purpose or a blend with pastry flour than to bread flour.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so "three gills to a pint" of water is 1 1/2 to 2 cups. A saltspoonful is a quarter teaspoon, which is very little salt for two pounds of flour — most cooks today would use 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons.
- The potato is doing real workIn the first recipe and in the Old Virginia sponge, the boiled potato feeds the yeast with accessible starch and helps keep the crumb moist and soft longer than a plain flour dough. The recipes call for a small potato in the first and a large one in the sponge; mash it smooth with no lumps, and do not salt it.
- Thirty minutes of kneadingThat figure assumes hand-kneading on a board with a soft, slack dough and no gluten development from mixing. Eight to ten minutes by hand on a modern flour, or five minutes on a stand mixer's dough hook, reaches the same smooth windowpane.
- Oven temperaturesA moderate oven is usually read as about 350F. "Bake it slowly" in the third recipe suggests something lower, around 325F. "Very little fire under the oven" in the family bread describes a Dutch oven or brick oven with most of the heat above — the modern reading is simply to keep the bottom from scorching, so bake on a middle rack, not a stone.
- Times and donenessAn hour at 350F suits a large free-form loaf; thirty minutes suits rolls and small shapes. Judge by an internal temperature of 195-205F rather than the clock, since the old loaves were denser and wetter than most bakers want now.
- Iron moulds and the greased topCast iron gives the dark, even bottom crust these breads were built around; heavy pans preheated in the oven come closest. Rubbing lard on the hands and over the top of the shaped dough keeps a skin from forming during the second rise and yields a soft crust — the same job a covered proofing box does.
- Overnight rise and temperature"Never more than milk warm" is around 95F, and the summer instruction to rise in a cool place is the key to the flavour: the Old Virginia loaf sits all night, which at 60-65F is a long, cool ferment. Do not let it rise in a modern warm kitchen overnight or it will overproof and sour.
- YieldThe first recipe makes one good loaf or about a dozen rolls; the two-quart family bread, which is directed to be made into rolls, yields about twice as much. The muffin variation with two beaten eggs gives a rich yeast-raised muffin baked in the iron moulds the recipe mentions, not a quick bread.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, gathered receipts from some 250 Virginia housekeepers, which is why the same chapter offers five bread formulas signed only with initials — Mrs. S. T., Mrs. A. C., Mrs. P. W. — each a household's own long-settled practice rather than a single tested standard. What they share is the sponge method and a reliance on home-kept yeast: commercial compressed yeast was only beginning to reach American kitchens in the 1870s and 1880s, and a Southern cook was more likely to maintain a hop yeast or a potato barm in a covered mug, feeding it and passing starter to neighbours. The insistence on soft dough, a boiled potato, lard on the hands and a greased top all point toward the tender, close-grained, soft-crusted loaf that Southern bakers preferred over the chewier hearth breads of Europe — a preference reinforced by the region's soft winter wheat, which makes weak gluten and rewards gentle handling. The closing note on reserving dough for dinner turnovers is a reminder that these were breakfast breads first, baked fresh before dawn, and that warmed-over bread was considered a small domestic failure.