Home › Frozen Desserts › Gluten Bread
Gluten Bread
1 cake compressed yeast 1 tablespoon sugar 1 cup milk, scalded and cooled 1 cup lukewarm water 1 level tablespoon lard or butter 3 cups gluten flour 1 teaspoon salt leem Dissolve the yeast and sugar in lukewarm liquid; add lard or butter, then flour, gradually, and salt. Knead thoroughly until smooth and elastic; place in well-greased bowl; cover and set aside in a warm place, free from draft, to rise until light, which should be in about two hours. Mold into loaves; place in greased pans, filling them half full. Cover; let rise again, and when double in bulk, which should be in about one hour, bake in moderate oven forty-five minutes. This will make two one-pound loaves. For diet use all water and omit shortening and sugar.
NUT BREAD No. 1 1 cake compressed yeast 1 cup milk, scalded and cooled 1 tablespoon sugar 3 cups sifted flour 1/3 teaspoon salt 2 level tablespoons lard 1/3 cup sugar White of 1 egg 3/4 cup chopped walnuts Dissolve the yeast and one tablespoon of sugar in lukewarm milk; add one and one fourth cups of flour and beat thoroughly. ; add one and one fourth cups of flour and beat thoroughly. Cover and set aside in warm place fifty minutes, or until light. Add sugar and lard (or butter), creamed, white of egg, beaten stiff, nuts, remainder of flour, or enough to make a dough, and the salt. Knead well; place in greased bowl; cover and set aside for about two and one half hours to rise, or until double in bulk. Mold into a loaf or small finger rolls, and fill well-greased pans half full. Protect from draft and let rise until light-about one hour.
This recipe will make one medium-sized loaf, or one dozen rolls. The loaf should bake forty-five minutes; finger rolls, six to eight loaf should bake forty-five minutes; finger rolls, six to eight minutes. 1 egg 3/4 cup sugar 1 cup milk 1 teaspoon salt NUT BREAD No. 2 2½ cups flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 tablespoon butter 1/4 pound walnuts Beat the egg with the sugar; add the sifted flour, baking powder and salt alternately with the milk; last add the butter, melted, and salt alternately with the milk; last add the butter, melted, and the walnuts. If black walnuts are used do not add the butter.
Bake in a deep pan in a slow oven for about forty-five minutes. 1½ cups corn meal 1/2 cup flour 1/2 tablespoon sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt
A straightforward yeast loaf whose only real peculiarity is the flour. Everything else is standard bread method, so the notes below concentrate on the substitutions and the numbers the original leaves unsaid.
- Gluten flourIn this period gluten flour meant wheat flour with much of the starch washed or processed out, sold chiefly for diabetic diets. The nearest current equivalent is vital wheat gluten blended into bread flour, roughly 1 part gluten to 4 parts bread flour; straight vital wheat gluten will give a dense, rubbery loaf.
- Compressed yeastOne cake is about 0.6 oz fresh yeast, equal to one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry or instant yeast. Dissolve dry yeast in the lukewarm liquid exactly as written.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives no figure; a moderate oven of this period is usually taken as somewhere around 350F. Forty-five minutes suits a one-pound loaf; the interior should read roughly 200F.
- LiquidOne cup scalded milk plus one cup water for three cups of flour is a wet ratio for a high-gluten dough. Hold back part of the water and add it as needed rather than committing it all at once.
- Lard or butterOne level tablespoon is a token amount for softness, not richness. Any neutral solid fat or oil serves the same purpose.
- The diet versionOmitting the milk, sugar and fat, as the last line directs, gives a lean loaf that stales fast and browns poorly. It is worth eating the day it is baked or slicing and freezing it.
- YieldTwo one-pound loaves, as stated, from pans filled half full. Small loaf pans suit the quantity better than full-size ones.
Gluten bread belongs to the era when a low-starch diet was the main treatment available for diabetes, before insulin came into clinical use in the early 1920s. Specialist mills and pharmacies sold gluten flour, and household cookbooks of the 1900s and 1910s routinely carried a loaf like this one alongside ordinary white bread, usually with a closing line explaining how to strip out the sugar and fat for strict cases. That is exactly the shape of this recipe. Whether the commercial flours actually contained as little starch as advertised was a recurring complaint in the medical press of the day, and the same product later found a second life among bakers who simply wanted a chewier, higher-rising loaf.