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Dough for French Bread
Place in a bowl a half pint lukewarm water or the same quantity lukewarm milk, a half ounce salt, and dissolve for a minute. Uncover bowl, pour water on sponge, thoroughly knead the whole well together for six minutes, add little by little the remaining pound of flour, briskly and constantly kneading meanwhile. The kneading operation after the flour has been added should continue for twenty-five to thirty minutes. Lift up dough with the hands and knock it as hard as you can against bottom of vessel ten different times, immediately cover vessel with dry cloth, put in warm place of same temperature as before (80 degrees) and allow to rise for two and a half hours again. TO SHAPE THE FRENCH LOAF (JOCKO) Remove cloth from vessel, transfer dough to a lightly floured table and cut in two even pieces. With the hands roll and press out each piece in ball shape for four minutes, shift them to corner of table, cover with a dry cloth and let rest for ten minutes, being careful to avoid draughts. Then neatly roll out one piece with hands evenly to four inches and let rest for two minutes, then roll it out round to seventeen inches long.
Have a board eighteen inches square. Arrange over it a piece of dry duck cloth the length of board, and eight inches wide, and flute cloth on both sides two and a half inches high and three inches wide. Carefully lay the loaf-shape dough in section or "bed," cover it with a dry cloth or a lightly buttered piece of paper, and place in a temperature of 80 degrees to rise for one hour. It should rise to double its size by that time.
TO SHAPE THE RING (COURONNE) Carefully roll out the other piece of dough evenly with hands to eight inches, let rest for two minutes, then roll it out round to twenty-two inches long and sprinkle a little cornmeal flour over surface to prevent sticking to pan. With an ordinary rolling-pin, twenty-four inches long by half an inch in diameter, briskly press down dough in centre from end to end to depth of half the dough, leaving one-half intact, then carefully turn pin three or four times. Take up pin and firmly join both ends, giving it a pretty ring shape. Have a lightly buttered tin pan, carefully place ring in pan, split side down, cover with a dry cloth or piece of buttered paper, and also lay in a place of 80 degrees temperature to rise for one hour.
TO BAKE THE FRENCH LOAF (JOCKO) Shortly before time for baking bread be very careful to see oven is at proper degree of heat. A very simple way to determine whether the heat is right or not is to place a piece of white paper in oven, close door, and after a lapse of five minutes open door and remove paper. If it is a dark-brown colour the temperature is right, if it burns it is too hot and should be cooled a little, and if it is only a light brown colour it should be made hotter. Remove covering from French loaf. Have a low-edged baking pan large enough to easily hold loaf placed alongside the board, then carefully turn over loaf into pan by means of the cloth without touching the dough with the hands. If loaf is not in exactly straight position in pan use a piece of pasteboard to straighten it, then with a small, keen knife make four or five rapid diagonal half-inch-deep incisions at equal distances on top.
TO BAKE THE RING (COURONNE) Have a pie plate or round roasting pan large enough to easily hold ring, remove cloth from ring, gently and carefully turn it upside down (split side up) in the pan and immediately place both in oven to bake for about an hour, or until a nice golden colour. Avoid opening oven door until twenty minutes after bread has been set in oven. After baking for thirty minutes turn bread over; if bottom is white, that is, if it has not attained a good colour, turn upside down and leave in that position for balance of time, then remove and serve.
FRENCH ROLLS AND FLUTTES (CALLED "PISTOLETS") Prepare same amount of sponge and dough exactly the same as for French loaf and ring (Nos. 3282 and 3283). When the "ready" dough is transferred and rolled out on floured table cut it in twenty-four equal parts instead of two. Roll out with hands into ball shape, cover with a dry cloth and let rest for four minutes, being careful to avoid draughts.
This is the second half of a two-stage bread: the sponge is built in the preceding entry, and this page picks up at the final mixing. Read it as a professional baker's shop routine written for a wood- or coal-fired oven, and most of the odd steps make sense.
- The missing first step"Pour water on sponge" refers back to a preceding recipe in which a preferment was mixed and left to ripen. Without it this page is unmakeable as printed; you need the sponge entry (and its flour and yeast quantities) alongside it.
- Flour quantity is incompleteOnly "the remaining pound of flour" is given here, so the total is whatever the sponge used plus one pound. Do not try to reverse-engineer a hydration figure from this page alone.
- UnitsA half pint is one cup (240 ml). A half ounce of salt is roughly 14 g, about 2 1/2 teaspoons of fine salt — read as a percentage of the full flour weight, including the sponge, not of the pound added at this stage.
- Twenty-five minutes of kneadingThat is a realistic figure for hand work on a stiff lean dough; a stand mixer with a dough hook will generally reach comparable gluten development in something like 8 to 12 minutes on second speed. Knocking the dough against the bowl ten times appears to be a finishing step for development, much like a few French folds.
- 80 degrees means FahrenheitAbout 27 C — a warm corner, not a hot one. Two and a half hours for the bulk rise and one hour for the shaped loaves fits that temperature with a well-ripened sponge.
- Duck cloth and the fluted bedCotton duck canvas pleated into ridges is a couche, still the standard support for long loaves. The pleats hold the sides of the loaf so it rises upward rather than spreading.
- The paper test for oven heatWhite paper darkening (but not burning) in five minutes indicates a hot oven; it is only an approximate guide and cannot be pinned to an exact figure. A modern oven at around 450 F with a stone or heavy tray preheated at least 45 minutes, with steam for the first ten minutes, is a reasonable equivalent; the recipe itself says nothing about steam.
- Turning the loaves overThe instruction to flip at thirty minutes appears in the ring's baking directions, where the pie plate or roasting pan shields the base from colouring. In a modern oven with bottom heat it is unlikely to be needed.
- Baking timeAn hour is long for loaves of this size. A 17-inch bâtard at 450 F is usually done in 25 to 35 minutes; judge by deep colour and an internal temperature around 205 F rather than the clock.
- YieldThe full quantity gives two breads — one long loaf and one ring — or twenty-four rolls if divided as described at the end.
Alexander Filippini, generally described as manager of Delmonico's Broad Street house in New York, wrote for American households and hotel kitchens that wanted French bakery results without a French bakery, which is why this entry reads like shop instruction rather than home cookery: pleated duck cloth, a half-inch dowel for splitting the ring, a paper strip to gauge the oven. The two shapes are standard boulangerie forms he simply the loaf joined into a ring, a shape traditionally associated with regional French bread and still sold in France today, while "jocko" is one of several bakers' trade names for a long, slashed loaf; the term belongs to shop slang rather than to any documented origin story. The pistolets named at the end are Belgian and northern French rolls, split down the middle before baking. What dates the recipe most clearly is the oven test: no thermometer, no dial, just a piece of white paper and five minutes.