Home › Bread-Making › Bread, in Summer or Winter
Bread, in Summer or Winter
In summer take three pints of cold or tepid water, four tablespoons of yeast, one tea-spoon of salt; stir in flour enough to make a thick sponge (rather thicker than griddle-cakes). Let stand until morning, then add more flour, mix stiff, and knead ten minutes; place in a pan, let rise until light, knead for another ten minutes; mold into four loaves, and set to rise, but do not let it get too light; bake in a moderate oven one hour. If bread is mixed at six o'clock in the morning, the baking ought to be done by ten o'clock. In winter take one pint of buttermilk or clabbered milk; let it scald (not boil); make a well in the center of the flour, into it turn the hot milk, add one tea-spoon of salt, enough flour and water to make sufficient sponge, and one tea-cup of yeast; let stand until morning, and then prepare the bread as in summer. This is more convenient to make in winter, since a hot fire is needed to heat the milk.-Mrs. D. Buxton,
This is a sponge-set bread from the era before packaged yeast, and the two versions are really one method with different overnight liquids. Everything hinges on the sponge: it goes together the night before and does most of the fermenting while you sleep.
- The yeast is the ambiguous part"Four tablespoons of yeast" means a liquid homemade or brewer's yeast of unknown strength, so no honest conversion exists. For three pints of water you would use roughly 2 teaspoons of instant yeast, less if the sponge is standing overnight in a warm kitchen.
- Flour is left to judgmentThree pints of water (6 cups) will take a great deal of flour before the dough is stiff, and no fixed figure follows from the recipe. The stated test is the reliable one: the sponge should be a little thicker than griddle-cake batter, and the finished dough stiff enough to knead.
- A tea-cupIn books of this period a tea-cup is reckoned smaller than a coffee cup and smaller than a modern measuring cup, commonly somewhere around two-thirds to three-quarters of a cup, though usage varied between books.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350F in modern terms; the book itself gives no temperatures. One hour suits four large loaves; check for an internal temperature around 200F rather than trusting the clock alone.
- Do not over-proof the loavesThe instruction "do not let it get too light" is the most important line here. A sponge dough that has already had two long risings will collapse in the oven if the shaped loaves are pushed to full expansion; take them at about three-quarters risen.
- Scalded milkScalding buttermilk or clabber to just below boiling was done to kill the souring bacteria and, in modern terms, to denature whey proteins that otherwise slacken the dough. The curd will separate and look broken; that is expected, and the flour absorbs it.
- Clabbered milkClabber is raw milk soured and thickened at room temperature, which pasteurized milk will not do properly. Cultured buttermilk is the practical substitute.
- SaltOne teaspoon for four loaves is very low by current taste. Considerably more is nearer standard bread practice, and the extra salt will also slow the fermentation usefully.
- Yield and timingFour loaves. The four-hour morning schedule assumes a warm kitchen; in a cool modern room the risings will run longer.
Household manuals of the late nineteenth century commonly organized bread around a sponge left overnight, because much of the yeast in use was homemade, unreliable, and slow — a wet potato or hop yeast kept in a jug and refreshed as it was used. The winter variation here is a piece of purely practical economy, and the recipe says as much itself: heating a pint of buttermilk demanded a hot fire, which a winter kitchen had anyway and a summer kitchen did not. The Dixie Cook Book, like its Northern siblings in the compiled-recipe trade, credits contributions to named women such as Mrs. D. Buxton, so what survives is one household's working schedule rather than a tested formula — hence the flour measured by feel and the yeast measured by whatever was in the jug.