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White Bread (Over-night Method cake)
Over-night Method 1 cake FLEISCHMANN'S YEAST 2 quarts water 2 tablespoonfuls sugar 2 tablespoonfuls lard or butter, melted 6 quarts sifted flour 2 tablespoonfuls salt Dissolve yeast and sugar in the water, which should be lukewarm in winter and cool in summer, add lard or butter, and half the flour. Beat until smooth, then add balance of the flour, or enough to make moderately firm dough, and the salt. Knead until smooth and elastic.
Place in well-greased bowl and cover.
Set aside to rise over night, or about nine hours.
In the morning mould into loaves. Fill well-greased pans half full, cover and let rise until light, or until loaves have doubled in bulk, which will be in about one and one-half hours. Bake forty to fifty minutes.
This will make six large loaves. If this quantity of bread is not needed, the recipe can be divided very easily, by taking just half of the ingredients called for above, as well as half the cake of yeast. The half cake of yeast, which you have left over, can be kept in good condition several days by rewrapping it in tinfoil and keeping it in a cool, dry place.
If a richer bread is desired use milk in place of water.
A straightforward sponge-free overnight dough, written for a household baking six loaves at a time. The measurements are by volume and the oven temperature is missing entirely, which is the main thing to supply.
- The yeast cakeFleischmann's foil-wrapped compressed cake of this era was small — the familiar size is 0.6 oz, equivalent to roughly 2 1/4 teaspoons of active dry or instant yeast. Larger cakes were also sold, so the amount is not perfectly certain; for a nine-hour rise at room temperature, 2 teaspoons of instant yeast for the full batch is ample.
- Flour by volumeSix quarts of sifted flour is 24 cups, about 6 lb or 2.7 kg. With 2 quarts (8 cups, 1.9 L) of water that is a hydration near 70 percent before the final adjustment, so expect to hold back a cup or two of the flour rather than forcing it all in.
- Oven temperatureNone is given; cooks of the period were left to judge their own ranges. Bake at 400F for the first 15 minutes, then 375F for the remainder of the forty to fifty minutes; the loaves are done at an internal temperature of 200-210F.
- Water temperature"Lukewarm in winter and cool in summer" is the whole control system for an overnight rise in an unheated kitchen. In a modern house held at 68-72F year round, use cool water, around 65-70F, or the dough will be over-risen and sour by morning.
- Salt added lastThe salt goes in with the second half of the flour, after the initial beating. Salt in direct contact with compressed yeast slows it, which may be why the order runs this way; either way there is no reason to change it.
- Pans and yieldSix large loaves suggests pans close to the modern 9x5-inch size, though none is specified. "Fill well-greased pans half full" is the useful instruction: roughly 1 3/4 lb of dough per pan, doubling to fill it.
- Lard or butterTwo tablespoons of fat across six loaves is a very lean dough by modern standards. It produces a firm sandwich crumb that stales quickly; the milk variation at the end gives a softer, longer-keeping loaf.
- Storing the half cakeIgnore the tinfoil advice. Leftover fresh yeast keeps a week or so refrigerated at best; dry yeast in a sealed jar in the freezer is the practical equivalent and keeps for months.
Recipes built around a named brand of yeast, with the brand set in capitals, come out of the enormous promotional literature the compressed-yeast companies produced from the 1890s onward. Fleischmann's had introduced commercial compressed yeast to American cooks in the decades after the Civil War, and its marketing leaned hard on the idea that a reliable, uniform cake of yeast freed the housewife from maintaining her own salt-rising or hop-yeast starter. The overnight method itself is older than the packaged yeast: a long, cool, unattended rise suited a household where the kitchen went cold at night and the range was not lit again until morning.