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Apple Bread
1/2 compressed yeast cake 6 OZS. (3/4 cup) butter ½ pint (1 cup) milk I lb. (4 cups) flour 3 ozs. (3 heaping tablespoonfuls) sugar 3 eggs Apple sauce At night dissolve the yeast cake in the milk. The milk should be heated to boiling point, then cooled to lukewarm. Sift the flour into an earthenware basin, add the sugar, and rub the butter well into them.
Add the milk, the eggs well beaten, and beat with a wooden spoon until the dough is blistered.
Cover and set over night in a warm place. The next day roll the dough in two cakes, each about half an inch thick; spread the lower one with tart apple sauce, then butter the other slightly and lay over it, and let them rise together in a buttered fireproof dish for half an hour.
Bake in a moderate oven till the bread is ready.
When taken from the oven spread with more apple sauce; dredge with sugar and return to the oven to glaze.
Serve hot.
An enriched overnight yeast dough layered with apple sauce and glazed — closer to a German coffee cake than to bread. A few of the original figures need untangling before you start.
- Milk quantityThe printed page was checked: the milk is ½ pint (1 cup), which is what our text now gives. That amount suits the 4 cups of flour, three eggs and 3/4 cup butter.
- Compressed yeast cakeA standard cake was about 0.6 oz, roughly equivalent to one packet (2¼ teaspoons) of active dry yeast. Half a cake is about 1 teaspoon of active dry — a deliberately small amount, because the dough rises slowly overnight.
- Scald and cool the milkThe instruction to boil then cool to lukewarm was a way of killing off wild organisms in unpasteurised milk, but it also denatures whey proteins that otherwise slacken the crumb. With modern milk it is optional, though harmless; 105-110F is the target before the yeast goes in.
- "Until the dough is blistered"This is the hinge. Beat with a wooden spoon until the surface shows bubbles and the dough pulls away from the spoon in sheets — gluten development, ten minutes or so by hand, four to five in a stand mixer with the paddle. Underbeaten dough will not hold the overnight rise.
- Overnight in a warm placeA period "warm place" was near the range, perhaps 70-75F. Modern kitchens are often cooler; expect 8-12 hours. If your kitchen is warm, the refrigerator overnight gives better flavour and easier rolling.
- Moderate oven350F. "Till the bread is ready" means 30-40 minutes for a dish of this size — the top should be deep gold and the centre 190-200F.
- Fireproof dishA dish that can go into the oven: glazed earthenware or stoneware. A 9- or 10-inch round baking dish or cake pan does the same work. The earthenware basin called for earlier in the recipe is just a mixing bowl.
- Apple sauceNo quantity is given. Allow about 1½ cups of thick, tart, unsweetened sauce for the filling and another ½ cup for the top. Thin sauce will soak the lower layer and leave it raw; cook it down until a spoon leaves a clear track.
- The glazeAfter spreading the top with sauce and dredging with sugar, a few minutes back in the oven is enough — or run it under the broiler briefly, watching it, until the sugar melts and shines. Serves eight to ten, warm, and it does not keep well past the day.
This is a yeast-raised apple cake of the sort found across German and Central European baking — a rich overnight dough, apple layered in the middle rather than folded through, then sugared and glazed — and it has arrived in English with its method largely intact, down to the earthenware basin and the wooden spoon. The apple sauce is the tell of an older economy: sauce was what you made with windfalls and storage apples going soft, and recipes that used it up were valued for that reason as much as for the taste. Note also the small amount of yeast set to work overnight, a way of working often associated with kitchens that had neither reliable dried yeast nor steady warmth.