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Fruit Bread
2 1/4 cups potato water or milk 3 teaspoons salt 1 tablespoon sugar 2 tablespoons butter 1 pound raisins 1 yeast cake 2 quarts flour Dissolve the yeast cake in a little warm water. Prepare the potato water by cooking two medium-sized potatoes in a little more than a pint of water. Press through a colander, and measure. While lukewarm, add the salt, sugar, yeast, melted butter and raisins. Warm the flour slightly and add gradually to the liquid. Stir in slowly enough flour to knead well, but not enough to make a stiff dough. Keep in a warm place for one and a half hours until light. Knead and let it rise again an hour or more. Knead again lightly, and form into loaves. Let it rise in the pans about an hour then bake for forty-five minutes. If potato water is not used, the same amount of water and milk in equal quantities may be substituted.
A straightforward enriched yeast dough, generous with fruit. The original gives no oven temperature and no yield, and the yeast measurement needs translating.
- Yeast cakeA yeast cake was a block of fresh compressed yeast, commonly around two-thirds of an ounce for domestic use, though sizes varied. Substitute one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry yeast, dissolved in a few tablespoons of the warm liquid rather than plain water if you prefer.
- Two quarts flourFlour was measured by volume in this period: 2 quarts is 8 cups, roughly 2 pounds. Treat it as a ceiling, not a requirement — the instruction to add "enough flour to knead well, but not enough to make a stiff dough" is the real measure, and a soft dough is what you want here.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Bake at 375F; forty-five minutes suits a standard loaf pan, and the loaf should read about 195F at the center.
- Potato waterThe starch in the cooking water from two medium potatoes softens the crumb and helps the bread keep. Press the potatoes through the colander into the water as directed — the small amount of potato pulp is part of the point, not an accident.
- Warming the flourWorth doing if your kitchen is cold. Cold flour drops the dough temperature and slows the first rise noticeably; twenty minutes in a barely warm oven, or simply flour left at room temperature, is enough.
- A pound of raisinsThat is about 3 cups, a heavy proportion for this quantity of dough. Toss them in a little of the flour before adding, and knead them in toward the end of mixing so they do not tear the gluten or scorch on the crust.
- Rising timesThe stated 1 1/2 hours, then an hour, then an hour in the pans assume a cool room and fresh yeast. Judge by volume rather than clock: roughly doubled each time, and the shaped loaves ready when a light press springs back slowly.
- YieldEnough for two 9-inch loaves, or three smaller ones. The dough is sweet and fruit-heavy enough that it browns fast; tent with foil if the tops darken before the centers are set.
Potato water in bread is often said to be among the older thrift techniques in the domestic repertoire — the starchy liquid was already in the pot, it fed the yeast, and it gave a moister crumb that staled more slowly, which would have mattered in households where bread was reportedly baked only once or twice a week. Fruit bread of this kind sits between plain loaf and cake: sweetened only lightly with a tablespoon of sugar, it depends on the raisins for sweetness, and would have been sliced for tea or breakfast rather than served as dessert.