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Hop-Yeast Bread
One tea-cup yeast, three pints warm water; make a thin sponge at tea time, cover and let it remain two hours or until very light. By adding the water to the flour first and having the sponge quite warm, it is never necessary to put the sponge over hot water or in an oven to make it rise. Knead into a loaf before going to bed; in the morning mold into three loaves, spreading a little lard between as they are put in the pan. When light, bake one hour, having oven quite hot when the bread is put in, and very moderate when it is done. (Bread made in this way is never sour or heavy.) To have fine, light biscuit, add shortening at night, and in the morning make into biscuit and bake for breakfast. By this recipe bread is baked before the stove is cold from breakfast, and out of the way for other baking.
To cool bread there should be a board for the purpose. An oaken board, covered with heavy white flannel, is the best; over this spread a fresh linen bread-cloth, and lay the bread on it right side up, with nothing over it except a very thin cover to keep off the flies. It should be placed immediately in the fresh air or wind to cool; when cool, place immediately in a tin box or stone jar, and cover closely. Bread cooled in this way will have a soft crust, and be filled with pure air. -Mrs J. T. Liggett, Detroit,
An overnight sponge-and-dough bread from the era when yeast was kept alive at home in a jar of hop liquor. The method still works; the leavening and the oven need translating.
- The yeast is the problemOne tea-cup of homemade hop yeast (the tea-cup was not a standardised measure; reckon somewhere around 6 to 8 fl oz) is a thin liquid leaven of unknown strength, not a modern packet. Substitute a lively liquid starter fed to the consistency of thin batter, or use 1 packet (2 1/4 tsp) instant yeast and add the cup of liquid back as extra water; expect the timings to run faster than the original.
- Three pints of waterSix cups. No flour quantity is given because the cook judged by feel: a thin sponge here means roughly a batter, and enough more is worked in at the night kneading to make a firm dough. Any total is guesswork; a dough of this hydration would take somewhere in the region of 4 to 5 lb of flour in all.
- What "tea time" means for the scheduleSponge set around 5 or 6 p.m., two hours to rise, kneaded to a dough at bedtime, shaped at dawn, baked mid-morning. The overnight ferment runs cool; the author's boast that the bread is never sour or heavy is attached to the method as a whole.
- Oven temperature"Quite hot" at loading is 425 to 450F; "very moderate when it is done" is 325 to 350F. This is a falling wood- or coal-stove oven reproduced in a modern oven by starting at 450F and dropping to 350F after the first 15 minutes.
- An hour is long for these loavesThree loaves from this dough are large, but modern ovens hold heat more evenly than a range that was cooling from breakfast. Check at 40 minutes and pull at an internal temperature of 200 to 210F rather than by the clock.
- Lard between the loavesThe three loaves are baked touching in one pan, with a smear of lard at the joins so they part cleanly — a batch loaf, not three separate tins. The sides stay pale and soft. Butter or oil does the same job.
- CoolingThe flannel-covered board and linen cloth are a rack: the point is air on all sides and no trapped steam. A wire rack accomplishes it. The recipe wants a soft crust and gets it by cooling in fresh air. Do not box the bread until it is fully cold, or condensation will make it clammy.
- YieldThree large loaves. The shortening variation turns the dough into biscuits for breakfast; the recipe does not say whether or how the batch is divided.
Before commercial compressed yeast reached ordinary kitchens in the late nineteenth century, most American households kept their own leaven, and hop yeast was the standard: hops boiled with water, sometimes thickened with flour or grated potato, and kept going by saving back a cupful. The hops contributed bitterness and, being mildly antibacterial, helped hold off the souring organisms that plagued a home ferment — which is exactly the boast behind "bread made in this way is never sour or heavy." The Dixie Cook Book, like other compilations of its day, gathered such recipes by contribution and printed the donor's name and city, so a Detroit cook's method sits comfortably in a Southern book. The passage about baking "before the stove is cold from breakfast" is a reminder that the whole schedule was dictated by a fire that had to be earned: bread was fitted into the residual heat of a range already lit for another purpose.