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Bread Raised Once
No other yeast is made with so little trouble as potato yeast. Bread made from it keeps moist longer, and there is no danger of injuring the flavor of the bread by using too much. When plentifully used, a beautiful, light, sweet, fine-grained bread is produced by only one rising, thus saving not only time and trouble, but also, what is more important, the sweet flavor and nutritious qualities which greatly suffer by the second fermentation, almost universally practiced. When this fact is thoroughly understood, every one will appreciate the importance of checking excessive fermentation, during which decomposition actually takes place, and the delicate, foamy loaves, "yeasted to death," which so many families now use and call the "staff of life," will give place to the sweet, substantial home-made loaves, such as our good mothers and grandmothers kneaded with their own skilled hands.
Take care that the yeast is good and "lively," for, without this, failure is certain. To make three loaves of bread, warm and lightly *grease the baking-pans, sift three quarts or more of flour into the bread-pan, press down the middle, and into it put two small tablespoons of fine salt; pour in slowly one quart of milk-warm water, constantly stirring with one hand in the flour, until a thin batter is formed; add a pint or more of potato yeast or one tea-cup of hop yeast. (If compressed yeast is used, a yeast cake, dissolved in warm water, or a piece of compressed yeast as large as a walnut, dissolved in the same manner, is sufficient.) Mix thoroughly, adding more and more flour, until a stiff dough is formed; place on the bread-board, knead vigorously for twenty minutes or more, flouring the board frequently to prevent the dough from sticking to it, divide into loaves of a size to suit pans, mold into a comely shape, place in pans, rub over the top a light coating of sweet, drawn butter, set in a warm, not too hot place to rise, cover lightly to keep off dust and air, watch and occasionally turn the pans around when necessary to make the loaves rise evenly; when risen to about double the original size, draw across the top of each lengthwise with a sharp knife, making a slit half an inch deep, place them in a moderately heated oven, and bake one hour, watching carefully from time to time to make certain that a proper degree of heat is kept up. Before browning they will rise to double the size of loaf which was placed in the oven, and pans must be provided deep enough to retain them in shape. Bake until well done and nicely browned. Nothing adds more to the sweetness and digestibility of wheaten bread than thorough baking. When done, remove from pans immediately, to prevent the sweating and softening of the crust.- Mrs. L. B. Lyman, Antioch, Cal.
A full three-loaf batch built on homemade potato yeast, with a single rise. The method is sound, but the quantities are large and the yeast measures assume a living starter rather than a foil packet.
- The hinge: one rise means lively yeastWith no second fermentation to correct a sluggish start, the leaven has to be at full strength. If you are using dry yeast, prove it in the warm water first and discard it if it does not foam within ten minutes.
- Yeast conversionsA pint of potato yeast or a teacup of hop yeast are homemade liquid leavens of unknowable strength. The recipe's compressed-yeast fallback is the easier one to translate: read the walnut-sized piece as roughly a modern 0.6 oz cake of fresh yeast, which is usually reckoned at about 2 1/4 teaspoons of active dry or instant. Treat it as a starting point, since period yeast cakes were not standardised.
- Scale and pan sizeThree quarts of sifted flour is about 12 to 13 cups, or roughly 1.4 to 1.6 kg, and yields three large loaves. Halve everything for a household batch, and note the warning about deep pans: these loaves double again in the oven, so use full-size 9x5 in tins rather than shallow ones.
- Flour is added by feelOnly the quart of water is fixed; the flour is "three quarts or more". Working in flour until the dough is stiff puts it somewhere around 60 to 65 percent hydration and lower as more goes in, firmer than most modern white bread doughs; stop while it is still tacky rather than dry.
- SaltTwo "small tablespoons" of fine salt for three quarts of flour works out to roughly 1 1/2 to 2 percent by flour weight, which is normal seasoning. Measure by weight if you can, since fine and flaked salts differ sharply by volume.
- Kneading timeTwenty minutes is right for hand kneading with a floured board. In a stand mixer with a dough hook, 8 to 10 minutes on medium-low reaches the same windowpane stage.
- "Sweet, drawn butter"Drawn butter here simply means melted butter, and sweet means unsalted. Brushing the tops keeps the skin supple during the rise; a light film is enough.
- Oven and donenessThe book gives no temperature; "moderately heated" is generally read as somewhere around 350 to 375F. An hour suits loaves this size, but check by internal temperature rather than the clock: 200 to 210F at the centre, with a hollow-sounding base. Turning the loaves out of the tins at once, as instructed, is what keeps the crust from softening.
The page belongs to the late nineteenth-century tradition of compiled household manuals, where signed contributions from named women, here Mrs. L. B. Lyman of Antioch, California, sat beside long editorial essays on technique. This entry is mostly the essay: an argument for the single rise, made at exactly the moment when factory compressed yeast, generally dated to the 1870s and 1880s in American kitchens, was displacing the homemade potato and hop yeasts that a cook kept going herself. The scorn for loaves "yeasted to death" reflects a real Victorian preoccupation with fermentation as a form of controlled decay, an idea inherited from earlier chemical writing on bread, and the appeal to "our good mothers and grandmothers" is the standard rhetorical move of a period that was watching bread-making leave the home for the bakery. Potato yeast, made by fermenting a mash of boiled potato with sugar and a little flour, was valued for the reasons the recipe itself gives: that the starch keeps the crumb moist, and that the leaven is mild enough that an over-generous hand does not sour the loaf.