Week 5—Bread (c. 1849)

Source: Putnam, Mrs. "Bread." Recipe. Mrs. Putnam's receipt book; and young housekeeper's assistant. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1849, pp. 1-2. Book.

When I considered last week that the Indian Pound Cake was likely the most laborious and exhaustive recipe I'd have throughout this entire project, I never expected to eat my words so soon and not especially with what looked to be a basic bread recipe.

This recipe took three days to make and used more than twelve cups of flour. It was also my first absolute and total failure. Because of this, this post will be formatted differently than the others; I'd like to detail what went wrong with the bread should anyone ever want to try their hand at it and see if they can make it any better, rather than just detailing how I had success. I encourage you to try it, but be prepared!

Let's talk about the yeast.

So, for those who have made bread before, you may have noticed that this recipe calls for half a cup of yeast. Even for those who may be more unaware, this is a wild amount of yeast to use in the modern day—for context, this basic homemade bread recipe (yielding two loaves, just like the one I used here) calls for a mere tablespoon of yeast. Another recipe calls for as little as two teaspoons. The half of a cup used here was a lot, eventually leading me to research the history of yeast as we know it today.

Commercialized yeast, as many of us would be able to recognize today, was not actually put to market until 1868. Before then, alternatives existed, namely using wort from beer-making or personal recipes that were often similar to a sourdough starter. These were much more akin to a kind of "liquid yeast," as I would call it. It made much more sense to me that this type of yeast was likely used in a recipe calling for cups of yeast rather than tea or tablespoonfuls, too. I thus found a recipe for yeast from 1860, and, I decided to try it for an authentic experience in attempting to make this bread.

Onto Day One

Source: Hale, Sarah J. and Louis A. Godey (eds.) "How to Make Yeast." Recipe. Godey's Lady's Book. Philadelphia: Louis A. Godey, 1860, pp. 172. Book.

Ingredients

• One pound (~454 grams) of flour

• A quarter of a pound (~113 grams) of brown sugar

• 1/8 of a teaspoon of salt

• Two gallons (~7.5 litres) of water

Note: I used a kitchen scale with an ounces and pounds option, so the grams calculations above are just estimates here since, for once, I could measure the recipe exactly as it is written. Otherwise, as usual, the other measurements are the ones that I used.

Method

1. Combine all of the ingredients in a large and tall pot and bring to a boil over medium to medium-low heat. Allow it to boil for one hour, stirring frequently.

2. Once done, allow it to come to a warm (but not hot) temperature before putting it into an airtight container. Keep it in a warm place overnight, and it will be ready by the next day.

On this day, I made the first mistake. I made the yeast recipe as instructed. I also learned something probably quite valuable—if you let it come to a boil over high heat, this particular combination of ingredients can boil over incredibly quickly. I found it to be a similar reaction as if you were to try to boil milk, where it could quickly go wrong if you looked away for even a second. After I learned this crucial lesson, I tried again and boiled it over medium to low heat, which seemed to work much better. I also quickly learned that you must stir this mixture consistently throughout the entire boiling time, as the flour can easily stick to the bottom of the pot and burn in deep. This is not a recipe I found you could just walk away from to let it do its thing; it will take time, presence, and patience!

Once the hour of boiling is done, "milk-warm" refers to the milk being at the same temperature as when milk is drawn from a cow. This meant that I had to allow the boiling mixture to cool for a little while before I could bottle it, and, as it was a sweltering day when I tried this recipe, it would likely take even longer to cool. Now, let me tell you. As this mixture sat and cooled, it began to stink. I've made sourdough before (and quite enjoy it), but this was a worse smell than any starter I've ever made. It smelled foul, and I still have no idea why it smelled so bad. But, due to already having had to start again due to the mishap with boiling at high heat, I wanted to see this particular recipe through just to see how it would do and if it would even work. I don't necessarily recommend this yeast recipe, just because of the smell that happened as it cooled. Still, if anyone dares to try it to see if it can be made any better, let me emphasize that it can start stinking.

When it was cool enough that I could interpret it as "milk-warm" and bottle it, due to the instruction to let it wait for 24 hours, I thought that I should likely treat it like any other sourdough starter that I've ever made and put it into a warm room overnight. This is not necessarily in the instructions for the recipe but is just a step that I took. While other bread starters that I've made before typically also rose a bit in this time overnight in a warm room, this yeast bizarrely shrank. I had less in my container than what I started with, so, at that point, I assumed this would likely not work. But, I still wanted to try.

Onto Day 2, Beginning the Bread

Ingredients

• Three quarts (12 cups) of flour

• Half a cup of the yeast from Day One

• One tablespoonful of salt

• Five to six cups of warm water, divided

• One teaspoonful of baking soda

• A pint (2 cups) of cornmeal, scalded

Note: Saleratus is a dated name for sodium bicarbonate. Now, we would use baking soda, which is pure sodium bicarbonate. When the recipe calls for saleratus, this is what it is referencing. Scalding cornmeal was also a common baking technique in the 19th century, as it was thought to turn some of the bitter starch from the cornmeal into more pleasant-tasting sugar. This was accomplished with a basic technique, boiling water, so I used two cups of the five to six total as outlined above for this purpose.

Method

1. Boil about two cups of water in a kettle. In a medium, heat-safe bowl, then use this boiling water to scald the cornmeal. Mix and allow the mixture to return to a comfortable temperature before using it in the bread. Do not throw away the water, it can be used as the warm water in the dough!

2. Once the cornmeal has cooled, combine the flour, cornmeal, and salt in a large bowl. Add the yeast. Slowly, one cup at a time, add the remaining warm water, mixing well between each cup. Depending on the humidity and the absorbency of the cornmeal, how much or how little water is needed may vary. Knead this well, making sure all of the flour is thoroughly combined. The dough will be heavy as the cornmeal continues to absorb liquid.

3. Cover and set the dough in a warm place to rise overnight.

4. On the following day, preheat a hot oven to about 350°F. Prepare two pans of your choice for baking bread; I used two standard bread pans, as I've used before.

5. Dissolve the baking soda with a little more warm water, then knead it into the risen dough until just combined. Try not to overwork the bread beyond the necessary point for all ingredients to be combined.

6. Divide the dough between the two pans and bake for at least 45 minutes, up to an hour or more.

Even despite the bizarreness of the yeast that I made on Day One, I still wanted to see it through, so on Day Two, I started with the actual bread. This quickly became a whole different challenge.

Three quarts of flour is equal to twelve cups. I wanted to make the bread exactly as it said in the recipe to ensure I could get as authentic as possible, but this is a lot of flour. The added cornmeal also weighed a ton, so I thought that, with the seemingly non-reactive yeast, there was no way that the weight of the bread itself would not completely crush any chance it ever had to rise.

Not even to mention the liquid-to-dry ratios.

Again, the weekend I chose to do this was particularly hot, and the humidity was high. So, it is possible that this largely contributed to my troubles on the second day, as I just could not get the liquid-to-dry ratio quite right. I still had an incredibly shaggy dough at five cups of water, including the cornmeal and water mixture. As it felt nowhere near the "perfectly smooth" as described, I added another half of a cup of water as a test. There was no real change, as the dough still felt incredibly sticky and lumpy. So, I added another half of a cup, only for this to shoot it to the other extreme very abruptly, where the dough suddenly felt like it had far too much liquid and could not be formed into a nice dough at all. I suspect this happened because of the cornmeal, which has wreaked some havoc with its absorbency in these recipes I've tried before. I decided to let the dough sit as planned overnight to try and fix the liquid issue, and luckily, exactly what I suspected seemed accurate; by the following day, the cornmeal had enough time to fully absorb all of the liquid. It was now a lovely, albeit still heavy, dough. Like the yeast, the bread was kept in a warm room overnight to help it along.

Day Three, Judgement Day

Despite my already slim hopes because of the odd yeast and problems with the liquid-to-dry ratios, the third day surprised me. I was pleasantly surprised to see that not only had the excess liquid issue been resolved, but it had, in fact, actually risen, too! It was a dense dough, but still a useable and even good one. I added the baking soda as instructed, and, with renewed hope, I prepared the pans and split the dough to make the two loaves of bread. Unfortunately, this is where problems returned.

I cooked the two loaves for the recommended time and used one of the loaves as a test to see if it was done. On this one, I found that the loaf was cooked around the outside after 45 minutes, but the center was still completely raw. Notably, the loaf was not brown on the top, remaining nearly entirely white. So, I placed the other loaf back into the oven and cooked it nearly twice as long as recommended. I also even put it under broil to see if that could help anything after this doubled time was up. The white top never changed. The bread never changed. It was still just as uncooked in the center as the first loaf, despite nearly having double the time in the oven, so I can honestly say that I don't even fully know how long you need to cook this bread. I suspect I should have tried it in a Dutch oven, as having a heavy lid on the bread may have helped contain enough heat to cook it in the center. But, it had already been such an intensive process that I knew I did not have enough resources to try this recipe again to see if my hypothesis was correct.

So, these are only my theories on improving this bread for now, while I otherwise chaulked the one I made up into a complete failure.

I was able to try some of the cooked bread, which had quite a pleasant taste. However, the issues with the smelly yeast, the liquid-to-dry ratio, and the cooking time all led me to accept that this week, I could just not get this particular recipe to work for me as I hoped. Nevertheless, we still learned something from that, too!

What do you guys think? How might you have gone about this bread, or how might you have recommended fixing the ones I made? What do you think went wrong?