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General Directions for Making Bread
In the composition of good bread, there are three important requisites: Good flour, good yeast, and strength to knead it well. Flour should be white and dry, crumbling easily again after it is pressed in the hand. A very good method of ascertaining the quality of yeast will be to add a little flour to a very small quantity, setting it in a warm place. If in the course of ten or fifteen minutes it rises, it will do to use.
When you make bread, first set the sponge with warm milk or water, keeping it in a warm place until quite light. Then mould this sponge, by adding flour into one large loaf, kneading it well. Set this to rise again, and then when sufficiently light mould it into smaller loaves, let it rise again, then bake. Care should be taken not to get the dough too stiff with flour; it should be as soft as it can be to knead well. To make bread or biscuits a nice colour, wet the dough over top with water just before putting into the oven. Flour should always be sifted.
These are directions rather than a formula: no quantities, no times, no oven heat. What they do preserve is the sponge method, which still produces better flavour and keeping quality than a straight dough.
- The hinge: keep it slackThe single instruction worth obeying is "not to get the dough too stiff with flour; it should be as soft as it can be to knead well." Nineteenth-century bakers added flour by feel, and a wet dough is the difference between an open, moist crumb and a dense one. Aim for a dough that is tacky and just short of sticking to the bowl.
- Testing the yeastThe flour-and-warm-place test was needed because yeast then meant homemade hop or potato barm, or a cake of compressed yeast of uncertain age. Modern instant or active dry yeast does not require proofing unless the packet is past date; if you do test it, sugar or flour in warm water at about 105F should foam within ten minutes.
- Sponge, in practiceA sponge here is a loose batter of part of the flour, all the liquid and the yeast, left until bubbly and domed and just beginning to fall. With modern yeast that is one to two hours at room temperature, or overnight in a cool room using a pinch of yeast.
- "A warm place"On a coal range this meant the shelf near the stove, perhaps 80-85F. A modern kitchen at 70F simply takes longer. Do not force it above 90F; the loaf will taste yeasty and sour rather than sweet.
- Three risesSponge, then a single large mass, then shaped loaves. The middle rise is optional by current practice but it does strengthen the gluten. Judge each stage by volume, roughly doubled, not by the clock.
- Oven heat, which is missingNo temperature is given because none could be. For plain white loaves use 425F for the first ten minutes, then 375F for another 25-35 minutes; the loaf is done at an internal 195-200F.
- Sifting flourFlour of the period packed hard and carried lumps and the occasional weevil, so sifting was hygiene as much as aeration. With modern flour, weighing is more useful than sifting: about 4 1/4 oz or 120 g per cup.
- The water washBrushing the top with water before baking gelatinises the surface starch and gives a glossy, deeper-coloured crust. Plain water, applied thinly, is still the standard treatment for a lean dough; milk or egg will brown faster and softer.
The Home Cook Book (Chicago, 1874) was one of the earliest American community cookbooks, compiled from contributions by "ladies of Chicago and other cities and towns" and sold for charity, and its bread chapter reflects a moment of transition. Leavening was still a household craft: cooks kept a jar of hop, potato or salt-rising barm alive on the shelf, and the little flour test given here existed because a dead or wild ferment could ruin a day's flour. Compressed baker's yeast was becoming available in the 1870s, and the Vienna Bakery at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876 is generally credited with popularising it in the United States, but the sponge-and-dough method described here long predates it and was the standard way to coax a slow, uncertain leaven into a dependable loaf. The instruction that bread requires "strength to knead it well" is also a plain statement of fact about the period: bread was made by arm, several times a week, in quantity.