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Potato Splits
Bake 2 large potatoes, when done mash them and mix with 1 cup shortening, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon sugar while hot. Cool to lukewarm, then add 2 beaten eggs, 1 cup warm milk, 1 cake yeast, 1 quart flour. Let rise till double in bulk. When light add 1 pint flour, let rise again. Now roll out quite thin, spread with butter, cut out in long shapes (lady fingers are nice) and put one on top of other. Let rise again till very light, bake in hot oven 400 degrees.
A rich potato yeast dough, rolled thin and stacked in pairs so the split pulls apart at the butter seam. The measurements are given in dry volume, which needs translating before you start.
- Flour by the quartA quart of flour is 4 cups, a pint is 2 cups — about 6 cups total. Add the second addition gradually; potato dough varies with how wet the potatoes are, and you may not need all of it.
- One cake yeastA cake of compressed yeast is about 0.6 oz. Substitute one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry or instant yeast. Proof active dry in the warm milk first; instant can go in with the flour.
- ShorteningA full cup is a very rich dough by modern standards and produces something closer to a Parker House roll than a bread. Butter or lard both work; the period shortening would have been lard or a hydrogenated vegetable fat.
- Mix the fat in hotThe instruction to combine shortening, salt and sugar with the potatoes while hot matters — the heat melts the fat into the starch and gives the crumb its softness. Then cool to lukewarm (about 110F) before the eggs and yeast go in, or the yeast dies and the eggs scramble.
- PotatoesTwo large baking potatoes give roughly 2 cups mashed. Bake rather than boil, as the recipe says; baked flesh is drier than boiled. Mash smooth, with no lumps.
- The stacked shape"Lady fingers" here probably means a long narrow cutter rather than the sponge biscuit. Roll thin, butter, cut strips roughly 1 by 3 inches and lay one on another; the butter layer is what lets them split cleanly after baking.
- Oven and time400F as written. Expect 12 to 15 minutes for pieces this size — pull them when the tops are light gold, since a lean-looking bake keeps the interior tender.
- YieldAbout three dozen splits from the full quantity. The dough refrigerates well overnight after the first rise.
Potato in yeast dough is one of the oldest tricks in American home baking: the cooked starch holds water, so the rolls stay moist for days and the dough is forgiving of rough handling. Before commercial yeast was reliable, potato water and mashed potato were also the feeding medium for homemade yeast starters, and the association between potatoes and light bread outlived the need for it. The stacked, buttered shape belongs to the same family as the Parker House roll and the old "split" or "twin" biscuit — two pieces baked touching so they part at the seam and take butter without cutting.