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Raisin Bread
1 cake yeast 1 cup lukewarm water 1 cup milk, scalded and cooled 1 tablespoon sugar 6 cups sifted flour 4 tablespoons shortening 3/4 cup sugar 1 cup raisins 1 teaspoon salt Dissolve yeast and one tablespoon sugar in lukewarm liquid, add two cups flour, shortening and sugar well creamed, and beat until smooth. Cover and set aside in a warm place to rise, free from draught, until light--about one and one--half hours. When light add raisins well floured, remainder of flour or enough to make a moderately soft dough, and salt. Knead lightly; place in a well greased bowl, cover and let rise again until double in bulk--about one and one--half hours. Mold into loaves, fill well greased pans one--half full, cover and let rise until light--about one hour. Glaze with egg, diluted with water, and bake 45 minutes in a hot oven.
A straightforward sweet yeast dough built by the sponge method, with the salt held back until the second mixing. The measurements translate cleanly; only the yeast, the oven and the bake time need attention.
- One cake yeastA cake of compressed fresh yeast of this era was about 0.6 oz. Substitute one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry yeast, dissolved in the lukewarm water with the tablespoon of sugar.
- Lukewarm means lukewarmThe scalded milk must be cooled to blood heat before it meets the yeast; combined with the water it should read 100-110F. Scalding was originally done to kill enzymes in raw milk and is unnecessary with pasteurized milk, though it does no harm.
- Salt goes in lateSalt is not in the sponge here; it comes in with the last of the flour, an order common in period recipes and usually explained as letting the yeast work unhindered. Keep that order. A teaspoon in six cups of flour is on the low side by current taste; up to two teaspoons is defensible.
- "A hot oven"That meant roughly 400-425F. For a sweet, sugar-rich dough with an egg glaze, 375-400F is the safer end, and the loaves are done at an internal temperature of 190-200F. Tent with foil if the crust colors before the centre sets.
- Forty-five minutes is a long bakeThat timing suits two large loaves in deep pans. If you divide the dough into three smaller loaves, start checking at 30 minutes.
- Flouring the raisinsTossing the raisins in flour before folding them in keeps them suspended rather than sinking, and stops surface sugars gluing them into clumps. Plumping them briefly in hot water first, then drying, gives a softer crumb.
- Pans half fullFilling greased pans halfway leaves room for the final proof to bring the dough just over the rim. Six cups of flour makes enough dough for roughly two standard loaf pans.
- The egg glazeOne egg beaten with a tablespoon of water (the recipe gives no quantity) brushed on just before baking gives the glossy browned top. Apply it gently after the final rise so the risen loaf is not knocked back.
The sponge-and-dough method here, where a portion of the flour is fermented first and the rest worked in after, was a common domestic approach for enriched doughs, and it is part of why the crumb of an old-style raisin loaf tastes more of bread than of cake. Compressed yeast in foil-wrapped cakes was sold fresh through grocers and dairies well into the mid-twentieth century, which is why cookbooks of this period specify cakes rather than spoonfuls.