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White Bread (Quick Method cake compressed)
(Quick Method) 1 cake compressed yeast 1 quart lukewarm water 2 level tablespoons sugar 2 tablespoons melted lard 3 quarts sifted flour 1 level tablespoon salt Dissolve the yeast and sugar in lukewarm water; add lard (or butter) and half the flour. Beat until smooth; then add balance of the flour, or enough to make a dough that can be handled, and the salt. Knead until smooth and elastic. Place in greased bowl; cover and set aside in a moderately warm place, free from draft, until light-about two hours. Mold into loaves; place in wellgreased bread pans, filling them half full. Cover and let rise one hour or until double in bulk. Bake forty to fifty minutes.
A straightforward straight-dough white bread from the era when compressed yeast came wrapped in foil at the grocer. The original omits an oven temperature, which is the one thing you have to supply yourself.
- Oven temperatureNo number is given in the original. Bake at 400F for the stated forty to fifty minutes; loaves are done at an internal temperature of 190-200F and sound hollow when rapped on the bottom.
- One cake compressed yeastA grocery cake of the period ran about 0.6 oz. Substitute one 2 1/4 tsp packet of active dry or instant yeast. With instant yeast the rises will run faster than the two hours quoted, so watch the dough rather than the clock.
- Three quarts of sifted flourFlour measured by volume after sifting comes out light: roughly 12 cups, or about 3 lb. Hold back the last two cups and add only what the dough needs, exactly as the recipe advises.
- Yield and pansThis is a large batch by modern standards. Expect three or four loaves in 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch pans, filled half full as directed.
- LardTwo tablespoons of lard gives a soft crumb and keeps well; butter, as the recipe allows, or a neutral oil works much the same at this quantity.
- Salt added lastThe salt goes in with the second half of the flour, which keeps it off the yeast in the early minutes. Mix it through the dry flour rather than dumping it onto wet dough.
- "Moderately warm place, free from draft"About 75-80F. In a cold kitchen the two-hour first rise stretches considerably; judge by the dough doubling and holding a dent when pressed.
- KneadingEight to ten minutes by hand, or five to six in a stand mixer on low with the dough hook. "Smooth and elastic" means a small piece stretches thin without tearing.
Loose-leaf cookbooks like this one were sold as binders so a housewife could add pages from the publisher or slip in her own clippings. The "quick method" in the title is a signal of its moment: for much of the nineteenth century home bread meant a sponge or a barm set overnight, but reliable commercial compressed yeast, sold in small cakes from the 1870s onward, made a same-day straight dough practical. Fleischmann's promotion of compressed yeast at the 1876 Centennial Exposition is often credited with popularizing it in American kitchens.