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Setting Sponge
Strain the yeast and water into a pan and mix in half the flour. Beat the batter thus made thoroughly. Scrape down the sides of the pan. Pour a spoonful of melted lard on top and spread it with the back of the fingers. This is to prevent a crust forming on top. Cover with a cloth and set the sponge in a moderately warm place to rise 4 or 5 hours.
Making up The Dough.
The sponge having been set at 8 in the morning, beat it again about one, add the salt and make up stiff dough with the rest of the flour. Knead the dough on the table, alternately drawing it up in round shape and pressing the pulled-over edges into the middle and then pressing it out to a flat sheet, folding over and pressing out again.
Brush the clean scraped pan over with the least touch of melted lard or butter-which prevents sticking and waste of dough-place the dough in and brush that over, too. Where economy reigns the strictest a little warm water in a cup, and teaspoonful of lard melted in it will do for this brushing over and insures the truest saving and smoothest bread. Let the dough rise till 4.
This is the first half of a straight sponge-and-dough bread, written for a bakeshop where the flour and water quantities were understood and only the method needed setting down. The clock is the real instruction here: sponge at eight, dough at one, bake in the late afternoon.
- The missing quantitiesNo weights are given; only the method is set down, as though the proportions were already understood. For a home batch, a workable ratio is half the total flour and all the water in the sponge, with the salt held back until the dough stage as directed. Salt in the sponge slows the yeast, which is one reason it is added later.
- "Strain the yeast and water"This assumes either liquid brewer's yeast or a compressed cake broken into the water, strained through a sieve to catch lumps and debris. Modern active dry or instant yeast needs no straining; use roughly a teaspoon of instant yeast per pound of total flour for a rise of this length, less in a warm kitchen.
- "Moderately warm"No temperature is given; a modern reading would be somewhere around 75-80F. Much warmer and a five-hour sponge risks over-fermenting before one o'clock; much cooler and it may not be ready.
- The film of lardSpreading melted lard over the sponge is a skin-prevention trick, not an enrichment. Plastic wrap laid directly on the surface does the same job. The thrifty version at the end — a teaspoon of lard melted in a cup of warm water, brushed on — is a dilute grease wash for the pan and dough surface.
- The kneading describedDrawing the dough up round, pressing the edges into the centre, then flattening and folding is a lamination-by-hand method that builds gluten evenly through a large piece. It is the hand equivalent of a stretch-and-fold and works well on doughs too big to knead comfortably in the usual push-and-turn way.
- Beating the sponge at oneKnocking the sponge down before adding flour and salt is deliberate: it redistributes the yeast and expels accumulated carbon dioxide, which bakers have long held helps the second rise. Do not skip it in favour of gently folding the flour in.
- "Let the dough rise till 4"Three hours for a bulk rise on a fully fermented sponge is long by modern standards. Judge by the dough, not the clock -- it is ready when a floured finger leaves a dent that fills back only slowly.
- What happens nextThe text stops before shaping, proofing and baking, and gives no guidance on any of them. A dough of this kind would be scaled, shaped, given a final proof, and baked in a hot oven; the temperatures are left to the baker.
The sponge-and-dough method described here was the standard commercial practice in American bakeries through the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, and it survived because it solved two problems at once. Yeast of variable quality could be tested and multiplied in a small wet batter before the baker committed his whole barrel of flour to it, and the long ferment developed flavour and dough strength that a straight mix could not match. Lard rather than butter as the anti-crust film and pan grease is equally telling: it was cheap, kept without refrigeration, and was the working fat of the American bakeshop until vegetable shortening displaced it in the early twentieth century. The closing note about the diluted lard wash "where economy reigns the strictest" reads as advice for a kitchen counting the cost of every loaf, though whether that kitchen is a commercial or a domestic one the text does not say.