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White Bread
2 T sugar. 1 qt. lukewarm water or half water and half milk, scalded and cooled 2 comp. yeast cakes 2 T Snowdrift or lard, melted 3 qts. flour (Club House) 1 T salt Dissolve yeast and sugar in lukewarm water, add lard, and half of the flour. Beat until smooth, then add salt and balance of flour, or enough to make dough that can be handled. Knead well. Place in greased bowl, cover and let rise until light, in warm place, and free from draft. Mould into loaves. Place in well-greased bread pans, filling them half full. Cover and let rise until double in bulk. Bake forty-five to sixty minutes. Makes four loaves of bread.
A plain four-loaf batch of the kind a church cook baked weekly. Two things are missing from the ingredient list and one from the instructions: the sugar, and the oven temperature.
- The missing sugarThe method says to dissolve the yeast and sugar together, but sugar never appears in the list. One to two tablespoons is the usual proportion for this quantity of dough, and it is there to start the yeast rather than to sweeten.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe names none; a moderate oven, around 375F, suits loaves of this size and would fit the forty-five to sixty minutes given. The loaves are done at an internal temperature of 190-200F and should sound hollow when tapped out of the pan.
- Compressed yeast cakesA compressed cake was about 0.6 oz. Two cakes is roughly two packets of active dry or instant yeast, about 4 1/2 teaspoons. If using instant, it can go straight into the flour rather than being dissolved.
- Snowdrift and Club HouseSnowdrift was a hydrogenated vegetable shortening; any neutral solid shortening, or the same volume of butter or oil, does the same job. Club House was simply the flour brand the contributor bought; a strong all-purpose or bread flour will serve.
- Quantities in modern terms1 quart of liquid is 4 cups; 3 quarts of flour is about 12 cups, roughly 3 lb. That is a large batch, near the limit of most stand mixers, and hand kneading in two halves is easier.
- "Until light"The first rise is done when the dough has doubled and a floured finger leaves a dent that does not spring back, usually 1 to 1 1/2 hours in a warm room. Milk was commonly scalded and cooled, the usual reasons given being to sanitise raw milk and to knock out a milk protein thought to weaken gluten; with pasteurized milk you can skip the scalding and simply warm it.
- Pans and yieldFour loaves from this much dough suits standard loaf pans of roughly 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 in, filled half full as directed so the second rise brings the dough just to the rim. Cool completely on a rack before slicing or the crumb will compress.
Community cookbooks like this one were compiled from members' own kitchens, which is why the ingredient list names brands rather than types: Snowdrift shortening and Club House flour were what the contributor bought. The recipe also marks a transition point in home baking. Compressed yeast cakes, sold refrigerated and reliable, had by the early twentieth century largely replaced the homemade liquid yeasts and salt-rising starters of earlier generations, cutting a bread that once took most of a day down to a few hours. The recipe yields four loaves at a time, and it gives no oven temperature.