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Bread And Fancy Breads, By Laura Bigelow Guest

That's the book from 1917 that I'm doing tomorrow's recipe from. You can find it on Google Books; I'm using the recipe for "Milk And Water Bread".

Dissolve one yeast cake in quarter of a cupful of lukewarm water, stir in enough flour to make a batter, cover and leave to rise. Mix together a cupful of scalded milk, a cupful of boiling water, a tablespoonful of lard, an equal quantity of butter, and a teaspoonful and a half of salt. Stir this mixture into the sponge and add five cupsful of sifted flour, or one cupful of white flour and enough entire wheat flour to knead. In the latter case add also three tablespoonsful of molasses. This bread may be mixed, raised and baked in five hours, and should be mixed in the morning when the cook is able to watch the dough as it rises and to keep it at a uniform temperature. The bowl containing the dough may be placed in a pan of water, keeping the water between 95° and 100° Fahrenheit. Many cooks who have not proved themselves good breadmakers are successful when employing this method.

I wanted to try to put this into a standard "list of ingredients, then instructions" format; but I'm wondering—how long do I need this to rise? I'm guessing it needs about 40 minutes to bake, that leaves about 4 hours of rising time. There's no mention of proofing. Red Star has a page to convert between cake and dry yeast; they have a 2 ounce cake which they say is equal to 6¾ teaspoons of active dry yeast; that's about 4 packets. On the other hand, Cook's Thesaurus has 1 cake equal to 2¼ teaspoons, or just about one packet. Which suits well for the five cups of flour.

I'll give the final recipe, as I baked it, tomorrow, and let you know. I'm also making a loaf of the Amish White. Yum!

God speed, and remember: All sorrows are less with bread.

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