Hotel Loaves
The crusty cleft loaves not being suitable to slice for the table, nor for toast, we make of the same dough slightly worked, a better sort. Cut the dough in eight pieces and mould them up round, but not enough to destroy the texture--only from 6 to 12 turns. Let stand on the table a few minutes. Press them out like dinner plates. Bring over two opposite edges and press them into the middle and place the long loaves side by side in the pans.
This is a shaping method rather than a full formula — it assumes the crusty cleft loaf dough from the entry before it, and gives no oven heat or timing at all. The points below fill in what a modern baker needs.
- It depends on another recipeThere is no ingredient list because the dough is borrowed from the preceding crusty loaf recipe, which is not reproduced here; from the handling described it appears to be a plain lean white bread dough. Any ordinary white bread dough of moderate hydration will behave roughly the way the instructions expect.
- Scale, not "eight pieces"The original batch size is unstated, so the division tells you nothing on its own; note too that the loaves go into the pans side by side, several to a pan, so each piece is well short of a full single-loaf pan. Divide by weight to whatever suits the pans you have.
- "Only from 6 to 12 turns"This is the hinge of the whole method. Pre-shaping a slack dough hard degasses it and coarsens the crumb; a dozen light rotations under the palm is enough to build a skin without knocking out the gas.
- The fold is a batard, not a boulePressing the round out flat and folding two opposite edges into the centre produces a seamed cylinder. Seal the seam with the heel of the hand and set it seam-side down in the pan, or it will open in the heat.
- Proof before bakingThe text stops at panning. Let the loaves rise until they crown just above the rim and hold a slow dent when pressed, roughly 45–75 minutes at warm room temperature.
- Oven heatThe text gives no oven heat or timing at all. For pan bread of this kind a hot oven of about 425-450F works; a one-pound loaf takes 30-40 minutes and is done at an internal temperature of 200-210F.
- Why no cleftThe text says only that the crusty cleft loaves are unsuitable for slicing or toast. The aim of this shaping is the opposite of maximum crust: an even loaf that slices cleanly for table bread and toast.
Hotel and restaurant bakeries ran a single dough through several shapes, which is exactly what this entry describes: the same batch that made crusty split loaves for the bread basket, worked a little differently, becomes the sandwich and toast loaf. The distinction mattered because uniform slices were wanted, and a free-standing crusty loaf gives ragged, uneven slices with too much crust per bite. Pan loaves solved that, and the pan itself, plus the deliberately gentle handling, is the whole technology. The instruction to press the dough out "like dinner plates" is a reminder of who these books were written for: bakers who had plates and pans in front of them all day.