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Monte Carlo Bread
2 cups scalded milk 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 1 cup sugar 1 cup shortening 6 eggs 2 yeast cakes softened in 1/2 cup lukewarm water 9 cups flour (enough to make soft dough) 1 1/2 cups currants Add scalded milk to salt, sugar and fat. When lukewarm, add the yeast. Add one-half the flour and beat well. Let rise until very light. Add slightly beaten eggs, currants and remaining flour. Knead lightly, let rise and when light place in well-oiled bread-pans. Let rise and when light bake in moderate oven (350 degrees-400 degrees F.). When the bread is a few days old, cut in thick slices and toast.
This is a sweet, egg-and-butter-rich yeast dough of the kugelhopf and panettone family, filed here among the quick breads but leavened entirely with yeast. Nine cups of flour makes a large batch: plan on three standard loaves.
- Yeast cakesTwo cakes means two of the small compressed fresh yeast cakes sold in the period, roughly 0.6 oz each. Substitute two packets (about 4 1/2 teaspoons) of active dry yeast, softened in the 1/2 cup of lukewarm water as directed.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives a range, 350-400 F. Use the lower end, 350 F: for a dough this sweet and eggy the sugar and yolks brown fast and the crust will be dark long before the centre sets.
- DonenessNo time is given. Loaves of this size take 35 to 45 minutes; the centre should read about 190F. Sweet enriched crumb tastes gummy if pulled early.
- Scalding the milkScalding raw milk served both to heat it safely and, by the usual explanation, to break down components in whey that weaken gluten. With pasteurised milk it is largely unnecessary, though heating does speed the dissolving of the sugar and fat. Cool to lukewarm before the yeast goes in either way.
- ShorteningIn a book of this period the word covers lard, butter or a solid vegetable fat. Butter gives the best flavour for a sweet bread; measure it as a solid cup, about 8 oz.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh red or black currants. Toss them in a spoonful of the measured flour before adding so they disperse rather than sink and burn.
- Expect slow risesA cup of sugar and a cup of fat both drag on fermentation; the method beats up a loose batter with half the flour first and holds the eggs back until the second stage. Each rise may take well over an hour; judge by volume, not the clock.
- ServingThe final line is the point of the loaf: a few days old, cut thick and toasted. Fresh, it is soft and crumbly; stale, it toasts into something closer to a rusk and takes butter well.
Sweet yeast breads studded with dried fruit run through nearly every European baking tradition, and American cookbooks of the 1910s and 1920s collected them under whatever glamorous name suited the moment. "Monte Carlo" appears to be one of those names, attached for continental cachet; no connection to the principality is documented. The instruction to toast the days-old slices is an older habit showing through, from a time when a large batch of enriched bread was baked once and eaten down over a week.