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White Bread (For Use Over Night cake)
(For Use Over Night) 1/2 cake compressed yeast 1 quart water 1 level tablespoon sugar 1 tablespoon melted lard 3 quarts sifted flour 1 level tablespoon salt Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the water, which should be lukewarm in winter and cool in summer; add two tablespoons of lard (or butter) and half the flour. Beat until smooth; then add balance of the flour, or enough to make moderately firm dough, and last, the salt. Knead until smooth and elastic. Place in wellgreased bowl and cover; set aside to rise over night, or about nine hours. In the morning mold into loaves. Fill well-greased pans half full; cover and let rise until light, or until loaves have doubled in bulk, which will be in about one and one half hours. Bake forty to fifty minutes.
The half cake of yeast, which is left over, can be kept in good condition several days by rewrapping it in the tinfoil and keeping it in a cool, dry place.
A long, cool overnight ferment with a very small amount of yeast — the method behind most no-knead breads sold as modern innovations. Two things in the text need sorting out before you start: the fat quantity contradicts itself, and no oven temperature is given at all.
- The yeastHalf a cake of compressed (fresh) yeast works out at about 0.3 oz if the cake is the familiar 0.6 oz size, though cake sizes varied; roughly 1 teaspoon of active dry or instant yeast for the whole batch is a reasonable stand-in. It is a small amount for this much flour — the nine-hour rise does the work, and more yeast risks over-fermenting the dough by morning.
- The fat contradictionThe ingredient list says 1 tablespoon lard, the method says two. Either works; 2 tablespoons across three loaves gives a slightly softer crumb. Butter is a direct substitute, as the recipe allows.
- Flour measureThree quarts of sifted flour is about 12 cups, or roughly 3 lb. Treat it as a ceiling rather than a fixed amount — the recipe itself says to add the second half 'or enough to make moderately firm dough' — since modern flour may absorb water differently from what was on sale when this was written.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. As a starting point, 400F for the first 15 minutes and 375F for the remainder should suit the stated 40 to 50 minutes; lean loaves are generally done at an internal temperature of about 195-200F.
- Salt lastSalt goes in after the flour. Older bread instructions often held salt back on the grounds that it retards yeast; whether that was the reason here is not stated. Work it in thoroughly during kneading or you may get streaks of unsalted crumb.
- Water temperature"Lukewarm in winter and cool in summer" is a real instruction about controlling a nine-hour rise in an unheated kitchen. In a modern house held at 68-72F year round, use cool water, around 65F, and keep the bowl away from radiators and appliances.
- Pans and yieldThe recipe does not state a yield; a dough of this size would fill about three standard 9x5 pans. Fill greased pans half full and let the dough double, which brings it to about the rim — resist the urge to overfill.
- Storing the other half cakeThe tinfoil advice applies to fresh compressed yeast, which keeps about a week refrigerated. Dry yeast in a sealed jar in the freezer keeps for months.
Compressed yeast, sold in foil-wrapped cakes by commercial firms from the later nineteenth century onward, gradually displaced the homemade salt-rising and hop-yeast starters that fill earlier American cookbooks; the tinfoil note at the end of this recipe reflects that trade. Overnight methods like this one — mix at night, shape and bake in the morning — were common before quick-rise yeasts and the two-hour loaf, and a long cool fermentation develops acids and aromatics that a fast rise has no time to build.