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Sweet Bread with Fruit
Scald one pint of milk, add one tablespoonful of sugar and one-half teaspoonful of salt, and when lukewarm, one cake of compressed yeast dissolved in a little warm water. Stir in sufficient sifted flour to make a drop batter and beat 'until smooth. Cover and set aside until light and spongy. Cream together one-half of a cupful of butter and threequarters of a cupful of sugar, add gradually four beaten eggs and beat until light. Stir this into the light sponge, beat for a moment and set away to rise again. When light, add one pound of seeded raisins, well floured and sufficient flour to make a soft dough. Knead just enough to work it well together, return to the bowl and set aside once more. When well risen, take out on the board, knead for a moment or two until the air bubbles are well broken up and even in size, divide into two loaves, mold and place in well greased pans. When the bread begins to rise well, bake in a moderate oven for about fifty or sixty minutes.
DATE BREAD AND RAISINS, OR AS OUR BOYS CALL IT, "PIE BREAD."
Scald one cupful and a half of milk, add one teaspoonful of sugar and let stand until lukewarm; then add onehalf of a teaspoonful of salt, one-third of a compressed yeast cake dissolved in a little warm water and sufficient entire wheat flour to make a drop batter. Beat it until smooth, then cover and set aside in a warm place. As, entire or whole wheat flour (it is the same thing under different names), responds more quickly to the action of yeast, it is best to start it early in the morning rather than over night, that you may be able to take it at the proper stage of fermentation. To hasten this, especially in cold weather, you may place the bowl in a pan of warm water, covering the top to keep it evenly warm. When it is so light that the bubbles come to the surface, add one cupful of stoned dates cut in pieces and sift in sufficient flour to make a soft dough. Turn the dough out on a floured board and knead until it is soft and velvety. When the dough seems perfectly smooth and soft, return it to the bowl, cover and set aside to rise as before. Let it stand until it has quite doubled in size, then turn out again on the board and knead until all the large air bubbles seem to be broken up. Now mold into shape, place in a greased pan, brush over the top with cold water and let stand until the dough seems to have increased in size about one-third. Again wet the top with water and ✓ place in a moderate oven. It will take from fifty minutes to an hour to bake. To test, turn it gently over in the pan and tap on the bottom; if done it will give a slight ringing sound, which is soon recognized.
Raisin bread is made in the same way, using seeded or Sultana raisins.
Two related sponge-and-dough sweet breads, both built on an overnight-style batter sponge rather than a straight dough. The measurements are sound; only the yeast and the oven need translating.
- Compressed yeastOne cake of compressed yeast is usually equated with about one modern packet (2 1/4 tsp) of active dry or instant yeast, though period cakes were sold in more than one size. On that basis the one-third cake in the date bread works out at roughly 3/4 teaspoon.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperatures; 'moderate' in this period is generally read as roughly 350-375F. At 50 to 60 minutes these are large, heavy, sugar-rich loaves; if the crust colors too fast, tent with foil rather than dropping the heat.
- DonenessThe tap-for-a-ring test works, but an instant-read thermometer is surer: 190-200F at the center. Enriched doughs with a pound of fruit stay gummy if pulled early.
- Drop batterA sponge loose enough to fall from the spoon in a mass rather than pour — about the consistency of thick pancake batter. Expect roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups flour for the pint of milk in the first recipe.
- Flouring the raisinsThis is the hinge of the first loaf. A pound of fruit in a soft enriched dough sinks and scorches on the bottom; tossing it in flour first gives it grip and keeps it suspended. Add it at the end, and knead only enough to distribute it or the raisins tear the gluten.
- Seeded raisins'Seeded' here means the seeds have been removed, usually by hand — close in practice to what a supermarket now sells as seedless, though seedless Thompsons are a different grape grown without seeds. The text offers Sultanas as an alternative.
- Scalding milkLargely unnecessary with pasteurized milk: raw milk contains a whey protein often blamed for weakening dough structure, and pasteurization is thought to deal with it. Heating to lukewarm is enough, and scalding does no harm.
- Pans and yieldThe first recipe divides into two standard 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch loaf pans; the date bread makes one. Both slice best fully cool — warm, the fruit smears.
- Whole-wheat timingThe advice to start early in the morning rather than overnight still holds: whole-wheat sponges ferment faster and go sour and slack if overshot. Watch the surface bubbles, not the clock.
Fruited sweet breads sit in a long European line of enriched yeast loaves — the German stollen, the Italian panettone, the Welsh bara brith — enriched because sugar, butter, eggs and dried fruit were the expensive part. By the time this book was written, those ingredients were cheap enough for a weekday, and the American cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s are full of raisin breads treated as ordinary household baking. The homely aside that the boys call it "pie bread" is the tell: a loaf sweet enough to stand in for dessert. The recipe's fussiness about whole-wheat flour, and its insistence that "entire" and "whole wheat" are the same thing under different names, reflects a period when milling terminology was unsettled and graham and entire-wheat flours were being marketed hard on health grounds. Compressed yeast in cakes, sold fresh and perishable, was the standard leaven of the era; dry granulated yeast for home bakers came decades later.