Milk And Water Bread

For those of you who were hoping for another post on my bread yesterday, apologies; I didn't finish the bread until well after 11:00 PM, and didn't get into bed for another hour. So I'm exhausted this morning.

So anyway, yesterday I did decide to do the Milk and Water Bread from the Bread and Fancy Breads book I found on Google books. Again, here's the recipe exactly as it appears in the book:

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.

And here's what I did with it, in a more typical (for modern recipes) format:

Milk And Water Bread

• 1¾ tsp. yeast (1 packet)


• ¼ cup water


• 5½ cups flour


• 1 cup warm milk


• 1 cup hot water


• 2 tbsp. butter, or 1 of butter and 1 of shortening


• 1½ tsp. salt

Dissolve the yeast in ¼ cup water. Add ½ cup flour to make a sponge. (½ cup might have been a bit too much. Next time I might try ⅓.) Allow the sponge to develop for 45 minutes.

The sponge after 45 minutes. A lot of yeast for that little dough.

Add the milk, water, butter (and shortening if you use it), and salt to the sponge. (Yes, I know the instructions say to mix them separately and add to the sponge. I overlooked that part of the instructions; it didn't seem to hurt.) Stir to combine, then add the remaining flour to make a soft dough. (See below for an edit.)

A nice soft dough.

Oil the top of the dough, or cover it with a cloth. (I did both.) Let the dough rise until doubled in size, an hour or a little more. (I let it go for an hour and a quarter.) Turn out onto a floured surface.

After turning out. I left it to rise in the mixing bowl, so some of it stuck to the sides.

Punch down the bread and divide it in two. (I divided it in two, but not very equally. So I had a big loaf and a really puny loaf.) Roll out the dough into rectangles, then roll it up from the short side. Pinch the sides and the end to close them off. Set the loaves in 9" loaf pans to proof for half an hour. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 °F (180 °C; Gas Mark 4).

The big loaf, set to proof in the pan. I usually proof my loaves on top of the oven.

Bake for 30 or 40 minutes until done. Take them out, let them cool in the pan for five minutes or so and then on a cooling rack for ten or fifteen.

My puny little loaf came out looking a bit weird :-)

When it's cool, enjoy!

Yum!

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

Edit (22 January 2012): I just realized as I looked up this bread to make it again that I didn't actually instruct myself anywhere to knead the bread. Obviously this needs to be done, and I'd typically expect it to be done just after mixing. So let's make the instructions read "... add the remaining flour to make a soft dough. Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and knead for about 10 minutes." There. Much better.