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Household Bread
Mix in following proportions: Ten pounds of best flour into half a gallon of water; when well mixed add half a pint of yeast, knead, cover it over and place in a warm place to rise. Make it into loaves or rolls and bake.
This is a bakery formula written for a hotel kitchen, reduced to its bare bones: flour, water, yeast, and the assumption that whoever reads it has made bread before. A few things need filling in before it will work on a domestic scale.
- The hydration is the hingeTen pounds of flour to half a gallon of water works out at about 42 percent hydration by weight, which would give a stiff, barely workable dough. Modern flours and mixers expect 60-68 percent, and the figure as printed may simply be short of water. Expect to add water toward the higher figure if you want a dough you can knead by hand.
- No salt is listedThe omission is probably an assumption rather than an intention; unsalted bread tastes flat and ferments faster. A common modern proportion is about 2 percent of the flour weight, which for ten pounds is about 3 ounces, or roughly 5 tablespoons of fine salt.
- Half a pint of yeastThis means liquid yeast: brewer's barm or a homemade potato or hop ferment, poured by volume. It is not interchangeable with modern granulated yeast. For ten pounds of flour, about 1 ounce of fresh compressed yeast or 2 to 3 teaspoons of instant dry yeast is the equivalent range, depending on how long you want the rise.
- Scaling downTen pounds of flour is roughly 36 to 38 cups, and the mixed dough weighs about fourteen pounds, so expect ten or more loaves. Divide the whole formula by five for a household batch of about two.
- "Best flour"This meant the finest white flour the kitchen could buy. Bread flour is the closer modern stand-in than all-purpose, though the original was not necessarily as strong as today's bread flour.
- Rising and shaping"a warm place" is not defined; around 75-80F is a reasonable modern reading. Let the bulk rise double, shape, then give the loaves a second proof until they are nearly doubled again before they go into the oven; the original takes this second rise for granted.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is specified at all. Bake loaves at 400-425F, rolls at 425F, until the internal temperature reaches about 200F -- roughly 35-40 minutes for a one-pound loaf, 15-18 for rolls.
Oscar Tschirky's book is the record of a large hotel operation, and formulas like this one show how differently a professional kitchen wrote things down: proportions rather than method, because the baker on duty already knew the method. Liquid yeast measured by the pint was still ordinary in the 1890s, though compressed yeast in cakes had been sold in the United States from the late 1860s and 1870s and was steadily replacing it. The instruction to "make it into loaves or rolls" is the whole of the shaping guidance.