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Raisin Bread (Dissolve a tablespoonful each)
Dissolve a tablespoonful each of butter and lard in a cup of hot milk then add a cup of either cold water or milk to the hot milk to make lukewarm. Sift a quart of flour with one teaspoonful salt, three tablespoonfuls of sugar, make a hole in center of flour and stir in half a cake of compressed yeast, which has been dissolved in a little luke-warm water; add part of your milk, stirring in the flour, then break in one or two eggs and the rest of the milk; beat up the dough lightly, which must be a stiff batter. Let it raise all night in a warm place and well covered. In the morning add a cupful each of raisins and currants, two tablespoonfuls of sugar and either some nutmeg or caraway seeds or lemon peel. Make into two loaves, working very little; let rise very lightly and bake three-quarters of an hour.
A straightforward overnight sponge-risen sweet loaf. The original gives no oven temperature and assumes a baker who knows what a stiff batter should feel like, so those are the two gaps worth filling.
- Oven temperatureNone is given, which was normal when the cook judged the oven by hand. Bake enriched loaves like this at 350-375F for the stated three-quarters of an hour; the loaves are done at an internal temperature of 190-200F.
- A quart of flourFlour was measured by volume in a quart measure: roughly 4 cups, or about 1 lb. Sifting matters here because the dough is mixed as a batter rather than kneaded, and lumps will not work themselves out.
- Half a cake of compressed yeastCake sizes varied, but a standard compressed cake is reckoned at about 0.6 oz, so half is a scant 1/3 oz. Since a whole 0.6 oz cake corresponds to about one packet (2 1/4 tsp) of active dry yeast, half a cake is roughly 1 teaspoon of active dry, or about 3/4 teaspoon instant for an overnight rise. Dissolve dry yeast in the lukewarm water as directed; instant can go straight into the flour.
- Lukewarm, and what it meansThe hot milk is cut with an equal quantity of cold liquid to bring it down to blood heat, around 100F. The yeast itself is dissolved in a little lukewarm water, and the milk is stirred into the flour; keep the milk merely warm rather than hot, since yeast begins to suffer well above blood heat and dies around 130-140F.