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Milk Bread
Scalded milk 1/2 cake compressed yeast 1/2 tablespoon sugar 1 1/2 tablespoons butter 1/2 tablespoon of salt 1 1/2 quarts sifted flour Put into a pint measure the butter, salt and one-half cup of boiling water. Fill it up with scalded milk. When lukewarm, stir and pour into bread-mixer, keeping back enough of the liquid to thoroughly dissolve the yeast. Add the dissolved yeast to the other liquids in the bread-mixer and lastly, the sifted flour, slightly warmed. Knead five minutes in the mixer. Set away in a warm place for one and one-half hours or until the dough is light. Knead again for five minutes. Set away in a warm place for an hour or more until well risen. Turn upon a molding board and shape in loaves. Place in buttered pans, and put in a warm place until light. Bake in a hot oven three-fourths of an hour. Remove from the pan and place the loaves in such a position that the air will reach all sides. This will form a crisp crust. To obtain a soft crust, wrap in a cloth.
A plain enriched white loaf from the era of the crank-handled bread mixer. Nothing here is difficult, but the yeast measure, the flour measure and the bake time all need translating.
- Compressed yeastHalf a cake of compressed (fresh) yeast is roughly 0.3 oz if the cake is the usual small size, though cake sizes varied. Substitute about 1 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast, or 1 teaspoon instant, which can be mixed straight into the flour.
- Flour by weightA quart of sifted flour is about 4 cups, so 1 1/2 quarts is 6 cups, roughly 24 oz / 680 g. Sifted flour is aerated, so measuring by weight is more reliable; hold back the last half-cup until the dough tells you it wants it.
- The pint measureThe butter, salt and half-cup boiling water go into a pint (2 cup) measure, then scalded milk fills it to the pint line. So the total liquid is 2 cups, of which about 1 1/2 cups is milk.
- Scalding the milkMilk was scalded when supplies were unpasteurized, and heating also denatures whey proteins that otherwise slacken the dough. With today's pasteurized milk it is largely optional. Cool to lukewarm before the yeast goes in; liquid much above 120F will damage it.
- Bread-mixerThe original assumes a hand-cranked dough pail. A stand mixer with a dough hook does the same work in five to seven minutes on low; by hand, allow eight to ten minutes.
- Oven and timeA "hot oven" in this period means 400-425F. Three-quarters of an hour at that heat will overbake a modern loaf in a metal pan; bake at 400F for 30-35 minutes and pull the bread at an internal temperature of 190-200F.
- YieldTwo standard 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch loaves, or one large loaf plus a small pan of rolls.
- CrustThe closing instruction is the useful part: cooling on a rack with air on all sides keeps the crust crisp, while wrapping the hot loaf in a cloth traps steam and softens it. Choose before the loaf cools, not after.
Milk bread belongs to the plain-but-enriched family of household loaves that fill the bread chapters of American cookbooks from the 1890s through the 1920s: water bread was cheapest, milk bread was the everyday step up, softer in crumb and slower to stale because of the milk fat and sugars. The recipe also dates itself twice over: compressed yeast, sold in wrapped cakes and delivered fresh, had only become widely available in the later nineteenth century, and the "bread-mixer" was a tin pail with a crank-driven dough hook clamped to the kitchen table, marketed to households that wanted to avoid ten minutes of hand kneading.