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Bread All in One Day
For two loaves allow one-half pint of boiling water; one-half pint of milk; one teaspoon of salt; one tablespoon of butter or lard; one-half cake of compressed yeast; flour to knead. Pour the water into the milk, add the salt and the yeast dissolved in a little lukewarm water. Stir in sufficient flour to make a dough, turn upon a baking-board and knead until soft and elastic. Place the dough in the mixing pan, cover and stand in a gentle heat to rise. This will take about four hours. Then form into loaves, kneading well; place in greased pans and again set to rise. When light bake in a moderate oven for forty-five minutes. This bread may be made with all water and no milk. A medium-sized mashed potato may be added to this recipe, if a moister bread is liked.
A plain white loaf from the era when compressed yeast was still a novelty and most bread was started the night before. The proportions work, but two details in the original will trip up a modern baker.
- Cool the liquid firstHalf a pint of boiling water into half a pint of cold milk lands somewhere near 130F, which is hot enough to damage yeast. Let the mixture come down to about 100-110F before the dissolved yeast goes in.
- The butter is orphanedThe tablespoon of butter or lard is listed but never mentioned again. Rub or stir it into the warm liquid before the flour goes in; it softens the crumb and slows staling.
- How much yeastHalf a cake of compressed yeast is genuinely ambiguous, since cakes ranged from about half an ounce to two ounces depending on the maker. For two cups of liquid and a four-hour first rise, roughly 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons of active dry or instant yeast is in the right range.
- Flour to knead"Flour to knead" with a pint of liquid comes to about 5 to 6 cups of bread or all-purpose flour. Hold back the last cup and stop while the dough is still slightly tacky; the recipe's own target, "soft and elastic," is the better guide than any measured amount.
- Four hours means a cool roomFour hours is a long first rise -- the recipe asks only that the dough stand 'in a gentle heat.' With a modern warm kitchen and modern yeast the first rise will often finish in 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Judge by volume, not the clock: doubled, and a poked finger leaves a slow-filling dent.
- Half a pintHalf a pint is one cup, so the liquid total is two cups. A gill, should you meet one elsewhere in this book, is half a cup.
- Oven temperatureA "moderate oven" in this period is usually taken as about 350F, which over forty-five minutes will give a lighter crust than many modern bakers want. Many now prefer 375-400F for 30-40 minutes; either way, the loaf is done when the center reads 195-205F.
- The potato variationA mashed medium potato adds starch that holds water, giving the moister crumb promised, and the potato's own sugars feed the yeast. Cut the added flour back slightly to compensate, and use the potato warm rather than straight from the refrigerator.
- YieldTwo small loaves, suited to 8x4-inch pans rather than the larger 9x5 tins sold today. In a 9x5 pan the dough will bake wide and low.
The title is the whole point: for much of the nineteenth century household bread was generally begun with an overnight sponge set with brewer's yeast or a saved batter, and the loaf that reached the table at noon had been started before bed. Reliable compressed yeast, introduced commercially in the late 1860s and promoted from the 1876 Centennial, with wide urban availability following through the 1880s, made a same-day loaf possible. The Butterick Cook Book, published by the pattern company for a readership of home sewers and housekeepers, is very much a book of this transition, printing the old sponge methods alongside the quick ones. The potato variation is older than either: potato water and mashed potato were standard bread additions long before packaged yeast, both to feed a sluggish ferment and to keep the crumb from drying out.