Oatmeal Bread
Scald and cool one pint of milk; add one teaspoonful of salt, one teaspoonful of sugar, one yeast cake dissolved in one-quarter of a cup of water and sufficient flour to make a drop batter. Beat until smooth, cover and set aside until light. Add sufficient flour and oatmeal in equal quantities to make a soft dough, turn out on a floured board and knead until smooth and elastic. Return to the bowl, cover and set aside a second time until well risen, mold into shape, place in two small well greased tins and when it begins to rise again, bake from forty minutes to an hour, according to thickness, in a moderate oven.
A straightforward sponge-method loaf, but two things in the text need translating: the yeast cake and the word "oatmeal."
- The yeast cakeOne compressed yeast cake of the period is roughly equivalent to one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry yeast. Dissolve it in the quarter cup of water at about 105F rather than cold.
- What "oatmeal" meantAt this period the word could mean ground oats -- a coarse meal closer to steel-cut or Scotch oats -- as well as the flaked rolled oats sold today. Either works, but rolled oats absorb water more slowly, so let the dough rest ten minutes before judging whether it needs more flour.
- Equal quantities, no total givenThe recipe never states how much flour goes in. With a pint of milk expect somewhere near 5 to 6 cups of combined flour and oatmeal across both stages; go by feel, stopping at a soft dough that is still slightly tacky.
- Scalding the milkScalding was held to counteract something in unheated milk that weakened the dough. With modern pasteurized milk it is generally reckoned unnecessary -- heating to about 110F is enough -- though scalding does no harm if you cool it first.
- Moderate ovenUsually reckoned somewhere around 350-375F. The recipe's own forty minutes to an hour is "according to thickness"; small tins will sit at the shorter end.
- DonenessOat doughs stay moist and can look baked before they are. An instant-read thermometer should show 190-200F at the center.
- Tins and yield"Two small tins" would suit something in the region of 8 x 4-inch pans. The recipe makes two modest loaves.
- The third riseNote that it goes into the oven when it *begins* to rise in the tin, not when fully proofed. Oat-heavy doughs have weaker gluten and are more prone to collapsing if pushed to full proof.
Oatmeal bread is often associated with a wave of turn-of-the-century American baking that treated oats as a wholesome, faintly medicinal addition to the white loaf. Oats had long been a staple porridge grain in Scotland and northern England, and the rise of commercially rolled and packaged oats in the United States during the 1880s and 1890s — sold heavily on health claims — put a cheap, shelf-stable form of the grain in ordinary pantries. Cookbooks of this era duly folded it into breads, muffins and gems. The sponge method used here, setting a loose batter with yeast and letting it go light before the second flouring, was a common household practice at a time when yeast was less reliable than it is now: the preliminary rise is generally thought to have shown the baker that the yeast was alive before the rest of the flour was committed.