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Nut Bread (Cake yeast cup milk scalded)
1 cake yeast 1 cup milk, scalded and cooled 1 tbsp. sugar 3 cups flour 1/3 cup sugar 2 tbsp. lard white of egg 3/4 cut nuts 1/3 tsp. salt Dissolve yeast and 1 tablespoon of sugar in warm milk, add 1¼ cup flour and beat thoroughly. Cover and set aside in warm place 30 minutes. Add rest of sugar and lard creamed, white of egg beaten stiff, nuts, remainder of flour or enough to make dough, and salt, knead well. Place in bowl, cover and set aside for 2½ hours until double in size, make in loaves and let rise 1 hour. Bake 45 minutes.
— Mrs. Hiram Gibbs
A plain sponge-method yeast bread enriched with a little sugar, lard and nuts. The original omits an oven temperature and contains at least one typographical slip, so a few decisions have to be made before you start.
- The missing oven temperatureNo heat is given, which was normal when readers judged by the hand and the stove damper. A sweetened, enriched loaf of this size bakes well at 350F for the stated 45 minutes; it is done at an internal 190-200F and a hollow-sounding base.
- Cake yeastOne cake of compressed yeast is about 0.6 oz. Substitute one packet (2 1/4 tsp) of active dry or instant yeast. If using instant, the 30-minute sponge stage still works and improves flavour.
- "3/4 cut nuts"A misprint for 3/4 cup nuts. Walnuts or pecans are the likeliest intention; chop them coarsely and toast them first if you want the flavour to carry through the crumb.
- Scalded milkScalding is generally explained as neutralising a component of unpasteurised milk that slackens gluten; with pasteurised milk it is unnecessary. The milk should still be warm rather than hot when the yeast goes in -- around 105F is comfortable, and well above that the yeast begins to suffer.
- The salt goes in lateSalt is listed last and added with the final flour rather than with the sponge. Follow the order as printed; do not add it to the initial yeast-and-milk mixture.
- LardTwo tablespoons of lard gives a soft, tender crumb and a faint savouriness. Butter or shortening substitutes one for one; the loaf will be slightly less tender with butter because of its water content.
- Beaten egg whiteOnly the white is used, whipped stiff and folded in. It lightens a dough that is otherwise fairly heavy with nuts. Expect it to deflate during kneading — that is fine, its job is aeration of the dough mass rather than a mousse-like lift.
- Timings and yieldTwo and a half hours for the bulk rise assumes a cool kitchen; in a warm modern room it may double in 60-90 minutes, and going by the look of the dough beats going by the clock. The recipe says 'loaves', but three cups of flour will realistically fill only one 8x4-inch pan.
Nut breads proliferated in American community cookbooks around the turn of the twentieth century, as home bakers began treating nuts as an everyday enrichment rather than a holiday luxury. This one belongs to the older, yeast-raised branch of the family, before chemical leavening and the quick-bread loaf largely took the name over. Philathea cook books were compiled by Philathea classes within the Baraca-Philathea movement that spread through Protestant Sunday schools in the early twentieth century — and sold to raise funds, which is why nearly every recipe carries a contributor's married name. The result is a snapshot of what one congregation actually baked, complete with the compressed household shorthand and occasional typesetting slip that come from setting hundreds of handwritten cards in type.