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American Bread
Place in an earthen vessel which is wider at the top than at the bottom, a pound and a half of flour and half a pint of fresh brewers' yeast, mixing it with a pint of lukewarm water, when it may be set one side for three or four hours until it rises and falls again. Place a little salt in a couple of quarts of water and mix it well with the above and add about nine pounds of flour, work together well and leave it until light when it may be shaped into loaves. It should first be put into a hot oven, allowing it to cool afterwards.
A commercial-scale sponge-and-dough bread from the Waldorf's ovens: over ten pounds of flour, no measured salt, and an oven that is meant to be falling rather than steady. The proportions need attention before you start.
- Scale it downAs written this is six to eight large loaves. Dividing everything by five gives about 2 lb of flour in the final mix plus a small sponge, which fits a domestic mixer and two loaf pans.
- Brewers' yeastFresh brewers' yeast here means liquid barm skimmed from a fermenting beer — a live, mildly sour leaven, not the deactivated nutritional flakes sold under that name today. A sponge built with about 1.5 teaspoons of instant yeast, or a cup of active sourdough starter, stands in for it; the starter is nearer the original flavour.
- The earthen vesselAny large bowl works. Keeping the sponge at 75-80F matters more than the shape of the vessel; the recipe asks only for three or four hours, not an overnight rest.
- Rises and falls againThis is the cue, not the clock. The sponge is ready when it has domed, then collapsed slightly in the centre and smells sharply of yeast — three to four hours with barm, perhaps 90 minutes with modern instant yeast, which is faster and stronger.
- "A little salt"Unmeasured, and far too little would leave the loaf flat-tasting. Reckon 2 percent of the flour weight: about 1 tablespoon of fine salt per 2 lb of flour, dissolved in the water as the recipe directs.
- Hot oven, cooling afterwardsThe instruction is ambiguous: it may describe a brick oven falling from its loading heat, or simply the loaf cooling once out of the oven. If you read 'hot oven' in the usual modern equivalent, start around 450F for the first 10 to 15 minutes, then drop to 375-400F for the remaining 25 to 35 minutes. A large loaf is done at 200-210F internal.
- Leave it until lightThe second rise should roughly double the shaped loaves and leave a slow-filling dent when pressed. Under-proofed loaves from a dough this size tear at the sides.
Oscar Tschirky's book records the working practice of a large hotel kitchen at the turn of the twentieth century, and the quantities give it away: a pound and a half of flour for the sponge, nine more for the dough, mixed in a crock. The two-stage sponge-and-dough method was long standard in professional baking, and the call for fresh brewers' yeast points to the older arrangement in which bakers bought barm from a neighbouring brewery -- a practice that faded as compressed yeast became widely available in the later nineteenth century.