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Bread (Mrs E S Cheesebrough Take four)
Mrs. E. S. Cheesebrough, Take four quarts of sifted flour and a teacup of yeast, a pinch of salt, and wet with warm milk and water stiff enough to knead. Work it on the board until it requires no more flour. If made at night the bread will be light enough to work over and put in pans early in the morning. This quantity will make two large loans One-third of the lump may be taken for rolls, which can be made by working in butter the size of an egg and setting aside to rise again; when light the second time make out in oblong shapes; cover them with a clota and let them rise again. As soon as they break apart bake in a quick oven. They will not fail to be nice if they are baked as soon as they seam. This is the great secret of white, flaky rolls. Two or three potatoes will improve the bread. Good housekeepers always have flour sifted in readiness for use, and never use it in any other way.
A plain overnight white bread scaled for a household, with a third of the dough enriched into rolls. The typography is rough in places — "two large loans" is loaves, "clota" is a cloth, and "seam" is a misprint for "seam"/crack, the same thing meant by "break apart" a line earlier.
- The hinge: bake the rolls the moment they crackThe instruction to bake "as soon as they break apart" means the moment the surface of the risen roll splits and shows fissures. That is the top of the proof; past it the gluten slackens and the crumb turns coarse rather than flaky. Watch the dough, not the clock.
- Four quarts of flourFlour was measured by volume after sifting: four quarts is 16 cups, roughly 4 to 4½ lb. That is a large batch by modern standards, and halving it is sensible if you have one oven and two pans.
- A teacup of yeastThis is almost certainly liquid yeast — homemade barm or a potato-based ferment kept in a jar, not dry granules. A teacup was not a standard measure; period sources put it anywhere from about 4 to 6 fl oz. With modern yeast, something on the order of 2 to 2½ teaspoons of active dry for the full batch would suit a slow overnight rise in a cool kitchen.
- The potatoes"Two or three potatoes" almost certainly means boiled and mashed, and cooking water was commonly used as well. The starch holds moisture and helps keep the loaf soft. No quantity by weight is given.
- Butter the size of an eggA standard old measure: about 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. Here it enriches only the third of the dough set aside for rolls.
- A quick ovenA hot oven, conventionally glossed as somewhere around 400–425F, though no temperature is given and the figure is only an approximation. In a wood range the heat gives colour fast before the interior dries.
- "Until it requires no more flour"Knead until the dough stops taking up flour from the board and pulls away clean — eight to ten minutes by hand. Adding flour past that point is what produces a heavy loaf.
- YieldThe recipe says the whole quantity makes two large loaves; if a third is taken for rolls, expect proportionately less bread, plus roughly a dozen to fifteen oblong rolls from that third.
The instruction that closes this entry — that good housekeepers keep flour sifted and ready and "never use it in any other way" — is the period speaking. Nineteenth-century flour was stone-milled, unbleached, variable from sack to sack and prone to packing down in the barrel, so sifting was both a lump-breaking and an aerating step, and a cook who skipped it got a different dough each week. The recipe also assumes a living yeast kept in the house: a teacup dipped from a jar of barm or potato yeast, replenished as it was used, which is why the rise is set overnight rather than timed. Compilations of this kind — The Home Cook Book (Chicago, 1870s) is the one this entry is usually associated with — were assembled from contributions by named local women for charity, which is why the same dish can appear several times over under different signatures.