Apple Loaf
Take from the raised bread dough sufficient to make a small loaf. Work thoroughly into it 1 tablespoonful of butter, 1/3 cupful of sugar, 1/4 teaspoonful of cinnamon and 2 well-beaten eggs. Add flour sufficient to bring again to a soft dough, knead lightly and let raise. Divide into thirds and roll each out on the board until the size of the pan. Lay one piece in the pan and spread over it an inch layer of tender sour apples chopped fine. Pour over 1 scant tablespoonful of melted butter, cover with the second piece of dough; add another layer of apples, more melted butter and the third sheet of dough. Brush with milk and let stand until very light. Steam for an hour then stand in a hot oven until lightly browned. Serve very hot in slices with sugar and cream.
A layered sweet loaf built from ordinary bread dough, steamed first and only briefly baked. The steaming is what makes it work, and it is also the step most likely to be skipped by a modern cook used to straight oven baking.
- Steam first, brown secondThe hour of steaming cooks the dough gently so the wet apple layers set without drying the crust; the oven is only there to colour the top, as the recipe's "lightly browned" makes clear. Baking it straight through would likely leave the dough underdone around the fruit. Set the covered pan on a rack over simmering water in a large lidded pot, or in a steamer insert, keeping the water topped up.
- "Raised bread dough"Ordinary risen white bread dough, taken after the first rise. Roughly 12 to 14 oz (350-400 g) is a reasonable starting quantity for a small loaf, bearing in mind that the eggs, butter, sugar and added flour will increase it. Store-bought pizza or bread dough substitutes acceptably.
- Enriching the doughButter, sugar and eggs added after the first rise will slacken the dough badly and slow the yeast. Work them in a little at a time, add flour back only until the dough is soft but not sticky, and expect the second rise to take longer than the first.
- Sour applesA tart cooking apple: Granny Smith, Northern Spy, or a Bramley if you accept that it will break down more. Very sweet dessert apples give a blander, wetter result. Chop fine, as directed, so the layers stay thin.
- Pan sizeThe original assumes a pan you already own. A standard 9x5 inch loaf tin or an 8-inch square pan both work; roll the three sheets to fit whichever you use. Grease it well, since the melted butter and apple juice will catch.
- "Very light"The final proof after brushing with milk: the loaf should look visibly puffed and a fingertip dent should spring back slowly. Under-proofing here gives dense layers, and steaming gives less lift than a hot oven would.
- "A hot oven"425-450F (220-230C). Ten to fifteen minutes uncovered is enough to dry and colour the surface after steaming.
- ServingYield depends on the pan; the recipe gives none. It is meant to be eaten hot, sprinkled with sugar and poured over with cream or milk, closer to a pudding than to a tea loaf. It goes heavy and dense once cold.
This belongs to a large family of American thrift baking in which a piece of the week's bread dough was pulled aside and turned into something sweet, avoiding both the expense of a separate rich dough and the fuel of a second bake. Steaming, rather than baking, is often said to be the older method for such loaves and puddings: it needed only a pot on the range top, it suited coal and wood stoves whose oven heat was hard to hold steady, and it produced a soft, moist crumb from a dough stretched thin with fruit. Sour apples were the standard cooking apple of the period, held in cellars through the winter, and their acidity balanced the sugar. That the loaf is served hot with sugar and cream places it firmly as a dessert in the nineteenth-century sense, where the line between a sweet bread and a steamed pudding was barely drawn.