UNTIL RELATIVELY RECENT TIMES, BREAD WAS the mainstay of the American diet. It was filling, exceedingly nutritious (particularly before highly refined flour became so readily available), and, especially in rural areas, the ingredients to make it were usually right at hand. Making bread was part of the housekeeping routine for most Wisconsin women in years past. Joyce Bauer, in her History of Kohlsville, a town settled mostly by Germans, described how it was done in the early days:
“Every pioneer had a hearth (an oven built of brick). These hearths were about six feet long, four feet high and four feet wide. A roaring fire was made in the oven, then the wood and ashes were removed and the bread was put in by means of a pole with a board attached to the end. The breadmaker would jerk the pole, enabling the bread to slip off the board and into the oven. Even the mixing of the bread differed from our modern methods. Since there were no pans or dishes such as we use, the pioneer women made bread baskets of straw. My great grandmother mixed her bread in a bread trough carved out of a log. Enough bread was baked at one time to last two weeks. Fresh bread was never eaten as it was considered harmful to the stomach.”
Bread fresh from the oven was not regarded with suspicion by all people; but fresh or not, it was eaten at every meal and as a snack in between. Most ethnic groups had a bread or breads that could call up memories of the Old World like no other single food. What follows is a sampling of the great variety of loaves that have been baked in Wisconsin.
Before stirring up bread dough, many housewives had to make their own yeast ahead of time. A hop vine was a fixture in many a garden around the state. Cecelia B. Nieman of Muskego remembered the vine at the rear of the family’s old frame home, which had been built in Muskego in 1847 by her Yankee grandfather. The hop vine itself had been brought from “Down East” and “furnished an abundance of hops which were picked when ripe and were dried and stored in bags hung up in the large pantry.” The recipe below describes how the yeast was made.
Yeast was also made from mashed potatoes or potato water, sugar, salt, and warm water allowed to ferment for several days. This was called witch or spook yeast.
Yeast from beer was called barm, and was used often in breads made in the British Isles. Many ethnic groups had one form or another of sourdough starters, made by combining flour, salt, sugar, and potato water and allowing it to stand until fermented several days. Most starters could be renewed by adding fresh ingredients after some was taken out for use. In this way these starters could—and did—last for years.
1 ounce hops
2 quarts water
4 tablespoons salt
4 tablespoons brown sugar
2 cups flour
1 cup boiled potatoes, mashed smooth
Boil the hops in the water for 30 minutes.
Strain the liquid into an earthenware crock or bowl and cool to lukewarm. Add salt and sugar and stir to dissolve. In a separate bowl, combine flour and 3 or 4 cups of the liquid and beat well; return to the crock and mix well. Set in a warm place three days.
Add mashed potatoes and stir until well combined. Keep in a warm place, stirring frequently, until the mixture is well fermented. Place in sterilized glass jars and seal tightly; store in a cool place. This should keep for two months and improves with age.
To use, shake jar well and pour out amount needed. Use same quantity as any other yeast.
Submitted by Mrs. Elmer Hare, Dalton.
2 cups oatmeal (regular or quick-cooking)
5 tablespoons butter
1 cup brown sugar
2½ teaspoons salt
2 cups boiling water
1 cup cold water
2 packages (each ¼ ounce) active dry yeast dissolved in ½ cup lukewarm water
2 tablespoons white sugar
About 9 cups flour
Melted butter
In a bowl, combine oatmeal, 5 tablespoons butter, brown sugar, and salt. Add boiling water and mix until blended. Mix in cold water, blending thoroughly. Add dissolved yeast and white sugar. Beat in enough flour to make a stiff dough.
Turn dough out onto a lightly floured board and knead until smooth and elastic. Place in a greased pan, cover, and let rise in a warm place until double in bulk. Punch down and let rise until double again. Form into 2 or 3 loaves, brush tops with melted butter, and let rise until double in bulk.
Bake on greased baking sheet at 375 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes. When done, and while still hot, brush top with additional butter.
Mrs. Spencer W. Turner of Rice Lake submitted this recipe for a typical British Isles oatmeal bread.
½ cup boiling water
1 teaspoon Spanish saffron
½ cup scalded milk
½ cup sugar
2 teaspoons salt
¼ cup shortening
About 5 cups sifted, enriched flour
2 packages (each ¼ ounce) active dry yeast softened in ¼ cup lukewarm water
2 eggs
Pour boiling water over saffron; steep 5 minutes and cool.
To scalded milk add saffron mixture, sugar, salt, and shortening. Cool to lukewarm. Add enough flour to make a thick batter, mixing well. Add softened yeast and eggs and beat well. Add enough more flour to make a soft dough.
Turn out onto lightly floured board and knead until smooth and satiny. Place in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk. Punch down and let rest 10 minutes. Shape into rolls and let rise until doubled again.
Bake on a greased baking sheet at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Makes about 3½ dozen rolls.
Submitted by a former Wisconsinite, Margaret I. Gibson, White Plains, New York.
1 cup scalded milk
½ cup freshly churned butter, salted
3 large eggs
⅔ cup sugar
1 large spoon of barm (beer yeast)
5 cups flour
1 small spoon salt
1 small spoon allspice
1½ cups currants
Melted butter
Additional sugar
Pour scalded milk over butter to melt; cool.
Mix well eggs, sugar, and barm and add to cooled milk mixture. Mix in flour, salt, allspice, and currants. Knead the dough thoroughly and then place in a buttered bowl and cover. Let rise to double in bulk. Turn out and punch down. Divide dough and put into 2 buttered pans. Cover and let rise again until doubled in bulk.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 45 minutes. By this time it should be browned and done. Brush the loaves with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar.
This handed-down recipe was submitted by Dr. Lois Byrns, Dane. The size of loaves for borreen brack, which means “speckled loaf,” she said, were measured by a woman’s fist size. A loaf was generally two fists long and two wide (ten inches), and one fist thick (five inches).
2¼ cups lukewarm water
1 package (¼ ounce) active dry yeast
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon salt
¼ cup oil
2 eggs, beaten
6 to 8 cups unsifted flour
1 egg yolk mixed with 1 tablespoon water
Measure warm water into a large bowl. Sprinkle in yeast and stir until dissolved. Stir in sugar, salt, oil, eggs and 4 cups flour; beat until smooth. Add enough additional flour to make a soft dough.
Turn out onto lightly floured board and knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. Place dough in an oiled bowl, turning to grease top. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, 1 to 2 hours. Punch down. Turn out onto lightly floured board and divide into 8 pieces. Shape each piece into a 14-inch roll. Braid 3 of these rolls together. Make a “dent” down the center of the braid and place a fourth strip of dough in the dent, stretching strip underneath the braid. Repeat with remaining 4 strips of dough. Place on oiled baking sheets, cover, and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 45 minutes. Brush tops with egg yolk mixture. Bake in a 350 degree oven about 30 minutes or until wooden toothpick inserted in center comes out clean and dry. Makes 2 loaves.
Submitted by Mrs. Manfred Swarsensky, Madison.
Take care not to use any more flour than necessary, as a soft dough makes a lighter biscuit.
2½ cups milk
1 small cake (.6 ounce) compressed fresh yeast
About 3 to 4 cups flour, divided
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons caraway seeds
⅔ cup melted shortening or butter
Scald milk and then cool to lukewarm. Dissolve yeast in milk and beat in 3 cups of flour thoroughly. Cover and put in a warm place until light (about double in bulk). Add sugar, salt, caraway seeds, melted shortening or butter, and enough additional flour so the dough can be kneaded.
Pinch off small amounts of dough and knead each into a flat biscuit. Place on greased baking sheets and let stand until double in bulk. Bake at 400 degrees about 20 minutes. Makes 25 to 30 biscuits (about 2½ inches in diameter).
Adapted from a recipe submitted by Mrs. William Lindauer, Dodgeville.
1 cup milk
3 tablespoons sugar, divided
7 tablespoons white or water-ground cornmeal
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups lukewarm water
3 tablespoons shortening, at room temperature
10½ cups soft wheat flour, divided
Scald milk and stir in 1 tablespoon sugar, cornmeal, and salt. Place in a clean, covered jar and place jar in water as hot as the hand can bear. Allow to stand 6 to 7 hours in a warm place or until gas can be heard to escape, indicating fermentation is sufficient.
Add lukewarm water, shortening, remaining sugar, and 2 cups flour. Beat thoroughly. Place jar in warm water to maintain an even temperature and let rise in a warm place until sponge is very light and full of bubbles, about double in bulk.
Turn into bowl and add remaining flour, which will give a stiff dough. Knead on a floured board 10 to 15 minutes. Cut, form into 2 loaves, and place in greased pans. Let rise in a warm place until 2½ times original bulk. Bake at 375 degrees 35 to 45 minutes. Makes 3¼ pounds of bread.
Submitted by Mrs. Elmer Hare, Dalton.
1 cup milk
¼ cup sugar
1½ teaspoons salt
1 egg, beaten
4 cups flour
1 small cake (.6 ounce) compressed fresh yeast dissolved in ½ cup lukewarm water
2 cups cracklings (small browned bits that are leftover from lard rendering)
additional beaten egg (optional)
Scald milk. Add sugar and salt and stir. Cool until lukewarm. Combine egg, flour, milk mixture, yeast, and cracklings. Knead dough, adding additional flour if necessary, until smooth, 3 to 5 minutes. Cover and let rise in a warm place until double in bulk.
Turn out onto floured board and roll out to ¼-inch thickness. Cut with a large glass or biscuit cutter. Place on greased baking sheet, brush with additional beaten egg, if desired, and let rise until doubled. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes, or until brown.
Adapted from a recipe submitted by Mrs. John Desris, Kenosha.
Middle and northern Europeans, particularly, brought with them the taste for rye breads. They came in all shadings from sepia to black pumpernickel; some were sour dough; many, like this one, were flavored with caraway seeds.
1 cup lukewarm water
2 tablespoons salt
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa
⅓ cup molasses
2 tablespoons caraway seed
2 cups rye flour
2 packages (each ¼ ounce) active dry yeast softened in ½ cup lukewarm water
About 3 cups white flour, divided
1 tablespoon soft shortening
Mix together lukewarm water, salt, cocoa, molasses, and caraway seed. Beat in rye flour. Add yeast and mix well. Mix in 1 cup white flour and soft shortening. Add 1½ to 2 cups more of white flour until dough is no longer sticky.
Turn out onto lightly floured board and knead until smooth and elastic. Grease the top with shortening, cover, and let rise until double in bulk, about 2 hours. Punch down and shape into 2 round or long loaves. Let rise again until double, about 1 hour. Bake on greased baking sheet at 375 degrees for 45 minutes.
Submitted by Mrs. Edith Gotz, Pittsville.
1¾ cups medium rye flour
1½ cups warm water
1 teaspoon vinegar
1 cup cooled potato water (water in which potatoes have been boiled)
1 tablespoon salt (figure in any salt used in cooking potatoes)
2 packages (each ¼ ounce) active dry yeast softened in ½ cup lukewarm water
About 3 or 4 cups white flour
Twenty-four hours before making bread, mix rye flour, warm water, and vinegar. Cover and let stand in a warm place.
Mix this starter with potato water, salt, yeast, and enough white flour to handle. Beat well with a wooden spoon. Add more flour if dough is sticky. Cover and let rise in a warm place until double in bulk.
Punch down and mix well with a wooden spoon or knead on a floured board to press out bubbles. Shape into 2 loaves and let rise until double in bulk. Bake on greased baking sheets at 375 degrees for 1 hour.
Submitted by Mrs. Edward Kisser, East Troy.
⅛ cup sugar
1 ounce active dry yeast
¼ cup lukewarm water
3 cups oatmeal
4 cups hot water
3 tablespoons vegetable shortening
2½ teaspoons salt
6 cups flour
Combine sugar, yeast, and lukewarm water. Combine oatmeal, hot water, shortening, and salt. Mix both mixtures together. Add flour 2 cups at a time and mix well. Let rise in a warm place until double in bulk.
Punch down and shape into 2 loaves and let rise until double, about 30 to 60 minutes. Bake in greased loaf pans at 350 degrees for 1 hour.
Submitted by Celia M. (Mrs. Clarence) Thorson, Cedarburg. It dates, she noted, from World War I when her mother-in-law had to buy a certain amount of oatmeal to get white flour.
Enough white bread dough for 1 loaf
Lard or pork drippings
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
⅔ cup currants
Sugar
When making bread, take enough dough for 1 loaf and roll out about 1 inch thick. Spread generously with lard or drippings. Sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon, and currants. Roll up; seal ends and seam. Place seam side down in a greased loaf pan. Let rise to double in bulk. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 1 hour.
Remove from pan and spread top with lard or drippings and sprinkle well with sugar.
Submitted by Mrs. Walter H. Waite, Clinton.
½ cup milk
¾ cup butter, softened
½ cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
4 egg yolks
2 packages (each ¼ ounce) active dry yeast dissolved in ½ cup lukewarm water
4½ cups sifted flour, divided
Prune Filling (see below)
Scald milk in a small saucepan; cool to lukewarm. Beat butter with sugar, salt, and egg yolks until light. Stir in dissolved yeast, cooled milk, and 2 cups flour. Beat 5 minutes at medium speed of electric mixer. Stir in remaining flour to make a very soft dough. Cover with a towel and let rise in a warm place until double in bulk, about 1 hour.
Stir dough down. Turn out on a lightly floured board, flour hands, and knead several minutes.
Divide dough in half. Cut into about 24 pieces, shaping each into a small ball. Place 2 inches apart on a greased baking sheet. Cover and let rise 45 minutes or until double in bulk.
Press large hollows in centers of balls with fingertips. Place 1 tablespoon prune filling in each.
Bake in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes.
12 ounces pitted prunes
2 cups water
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons grated orange rind
Chop prunes and combine with water and sugar in a saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until thick, about 15 minutes. Cool. Stir in orange rind. Makes 1¾ cups.
Submitted by Mrs. Wencel F. Dufek, Manitowoc, who noted that the prune filling could be varied with poppy seed or cottage cheese filling (see recipes below).
Bessy Hooker of Hillsboro grinds poppy seeds for kolache, 1945.
WHi Image ID 43133
6 eggs yolks
1 cup ground poppy seeds
¾ cup sugar
Grated rind of 1 lemon
¼ cup blanched almonds, finely chopped
6 bitter almonds, finely chopped
Mix well egg yolks, poppy seeds, sugar, lemon rind, and almonds. Beat egg whites until stiff and fold in.
Submitted by Mrs. Bess Mantuefel, Green Bay.
2 eggs
½ cup sugar
Pinch salt
1 pound cottage cheese, sieved
Dash vanilla
Grated lemon rind to taste
½ cup light raisins, optional
Mix all ingredients well.
Submitted by Mrs. John Desris, Kenosha.
2 packages (each ¼ ounce) active dry yeast dissolved in ¼ cup lukewarm water
2 cups lukewarm milk
1 cup lukewarm water
1 cup sugar
½ cup butter, melted
½ cup lard, melted
Scant ½ tablespoon salt
½ pound small white raisins, floured
¼ pound candied citron
¼ cup chopped lemon or orange peel
½ pound currants
½ cup grated carrot
About 10 cups flour
Combine dissolved yeast, milk, water, sugar, butter, lard, and salt. Mix well. Add raisins, citron, peel, currants, and carrot. Sift in flour until dough can be easily kneaded. Cover and set in a warm place until double in bulk.
Shape into several small loaves and let rise again until double. Bake on greased baking sheets at 350 degrees for 35 to 50 minutes. Cool thoroughly. Serve in thin slices.
Adapted from a recipe submitted by Ruth and Margaret Keizer, Platteville, who noted that bara brith (“speckled bread”) was served with tea. “It is an old custom in Wales to show hospitality to visitors by serving it. No well-ordered Welsh home is ever without this delicious bread. Welsh people are very secretive about some things, especially their household recipes. These are usually passed from mother to daughter by practice in the making.” For a quick-bread version of bara brith, see page 190.
Like many ethnic specialty breads, potica is typically made in large amounts. Even when this recipe is cut in half, it makes three generous loaves.
Dough
2 small cakes (each .6 ounce) compressed fresh yeast dissolved in ¼ cup lukewarm water
¾ cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar, divided
2 cups milk, scalded
¼ pound butter
1 tablespoon salt
3 large eggs, beaten
6 to 7 cups flour
Filling
1 pound butter, melted
1 pound honey (about 1¼ cups)
2 pounds walnuts, finely ground
1 cup heavy cream
3 cups sugar
Pinch salt
½ pound dates, chopped
2 eggs
Combine dissolved yeast with 1 tablespoon sugar. Add ¾ cup sugar to scalded milk with butter and salt. Cool, then add yeast mixture. Add beaten eggs. Beat in flour until stiff.
Knead on a floured board until smooth and elastic, about 20 to 25 minutes. Place dough in greased bowl, cover with a cloth, and let rise in a warm place for 1½ hours.
Make filling by adding honey and walnuts to melted butter. Stir in cream. Add sugar, salt, and dates. Cook until mixture starts bubbling, being careful not to scorch. Cool slightly. Add one egg at a time, beating quickly after each addition. Set aside.
Cover a large table with a cloth and sprinkle with flour. Roll out dough with a rolling pin, then pull with fingers until paper thin, being careful not to tear. (Patch any tears with dough.) Spread filling over entire area and roll up like a jelly roll. Place on greased baking sheet or cut in 5 or 6 portions and place in greased bread pans. Let rise about 30 minutes. Bake at 300 degrees for 70 minutes. May be glazed.
Submitted by Jeanne Cragin (Mrs. Lawrence) Atkinson, Superior.
A SWEET BREAD EMBELLISHED with nuts, raisins, and dried or candied fruit was a standard part of Christmas eating for many Europeans. In Germany, this bread was called stollen; in Switzerland, pear bread; in Czechoslovakia, vanocka; and in Norway—where that favored spice, cardamom, was added—it was julekaka.
The Czech and German versions were usually flavored with mace instead of cardamom. Blanche Mendl, Deerbrook, contributed her family traditions concerning vanocka, “It would not be Christmas without a Vanocka, a braided holiday bread,” she wrote. “My mother told us that her father always made the Vanocka, as he had experience as a baker while serving in the Austrian army as a youth. The Vanocka was made of raised sweet dough to which almonds, dark and light raisins, candied citron, vanilla, and mace were added. Grandpa started with a five-strand braid of dough for the bottom layer; then, a four; then three, and a two on top. Being artistic, he made two doves for the top. Most of the Vanocka were not as large or elaborate, but, heavens, he needed it for his twelve kids. The breads were taken to a baker to have them baked in large outdoor ovens.” •
2 cups milk, scalded
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1 cup butter, melted
2 small cakes (each .6 ounce) compressed fresh yeast dissolved in ½ cup lukewarm water
8 cups flour, divided
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 cup raisins
½ cup citron, chopped
½ cup candied cherries
½ cup almonds, chopped
Combine milk, sugar, salt, and melted butter. Cool to lukewarm. Add yeast and 4 cups flour. Beat well. Set in a warm place until double in bulk. Add cardamom, raisins, citron, candied cherries, almonds, and remaining flour. Mix well.
Turn out onto floured board and knead well. Set in a warm place until doubled in bulk. Cut into thirds and form loaves. Place in buttered pans and let rise until almost doubled in bulk. Bake at 400 degrees for 40 to 50 minutes.
Submitted by Mrs. August Sommerfield, Chippewa Falls.
The considerable yield of this recipe (twelve or more loaves), the fact that it’s a Christmas bread, and that it keeps well all suggest it would have been served throughout the holiday season, with enough extra loaves to offer as gifts plus some to store or freeze. No doubt more than one pair of hands (and arms) were required, too. Contemporary cooks who don’t have the space, time, and muscle to manage a foothill of dough and an all-day baking marathon may want to halve or quarter the recipe.
3 large potatoes, peeled and cut up
1 cup water
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons salt
2 large cakes (each 2 ounces) compressed fresh yeast dissolved in ½ cup lukewarm water
2 pounds dried pears
1 pound currants
1 pound raisins
½ pound figs
¼ pound walnuts
2 quarts water
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup shortening
1½ teaspoons cinnamon
Flour to make a medium-firm dough (17 to 20 cups total)
The night before baking, combine potatoes, water, sugar, and salt in a covered saucepan and boil until potatoes are done. Mash mixture and cool to lukewarm. Add dissolved yeast. Keep in a warm spot overnight. In a separate bowl, combine pears, currants, raisins, figs, and walnuts. Cover with 2 quarts water and let stand overnight.
The next morning, heat fruit mixture just to boiling, then cool to lukewarm. Add fruit and juice to yeast mixture. Mix in brown sugar, shortening, cinnamon, and enough flour to make a medium-firm dough.
Knead on a floured board. Let rise 3 hours. Divide and shape into 12 large loaves or many small loaves. Let rise in warm place about 1 hour or until top springs back when touched. Bake on greased baking sheets at 375 degrees for 35 to 65 minutes; total baking time depends on shape and size of loaves. (The bread may also be baked in greased loaf pans.) Brush top of loaves with butter.
When cool, store in a cool place. Makes 10 loaves.
Adapted from a recipe submitted by Mrs. Leon Grimm, Arpin, who noted that pear bread “has a better flavor when it is made ahead as the fruit mellows up. I find it freezes well.”
Blood bread was sometimes used for a soup by cutting the bread into cubes and cooking in hot milk seasoned with salt and butter; it was served at breakfast.
1 teaspoon salt
1 heaping tablespoon baking powder
4 cups white flour, divided
2 cups graham flour
1 quart cow’s blood mixed with ½ quart water
Sift together salt, baking powder, and 2 cups white flour. Add gradually with the graham flour to the blood and water mixture, using a wooden spoon. Keep adding remaining white flour until the dough can be worked by hand. Knead lightly; dough should be loose.
On a floured board, shape dough into flat rounds and place in greased, round cake pans, flattening dough out to the edges of the pan. Bake at 375 degrees about 1 hour. Serve with butter while hot.
Submitted by Hilda Hillman Sukanen, Marengo. The bread, she noted, will be about 1 inch high.
“For a good, thick loaf, take one pint rye flour to three pints of corn meal, one-half teacup molasses, or brown sugar, scald with boiling water—be sure to stir in water enough to thoroughly scald it—cover it up and let stand until cool, then reduce with cold, sweet milk until thin enough to pour into your pan; bake all day, let it stand in the oven all night, and in the morning you will have the best loaf of bread you ever tasted. If your crust is too hard to eat, remove it, soak in water, and add to your next loaf. It will be richer than the first.”
From A Helping Hand for Town and Country: An American Home Book of Practical and Scientific Information, by Lyman C. Draper and W. A. Croffut, 1870.
Norwegian flat bread bakes up thin and crisp like a cracker. Other recipes for flat breads call for cornmeal and white flour. Flat bread squares may be baked in a fry pan on top of the stove and then placed in the oven to brown.
1 quart buttermilk
½ cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ cup butter, melted
Whole wheat flour
Combine buttermilk, sugar, baking soda, and melted butter. Mix well. Add enough wheat flour to make a stiff dough. Roll out on a board dusted with white flour; roll as thinly as possible. Cut into squares and bake on baking sheets at 300 degrees. Watch closely, as it browns quickly.
Submitted by Mary L. Albrecht, Auburndale.
It was the Indians who introduced the first settlers to cornmeal, which became a mainstay in one form or another for all who followed. The most basic cornbread was widely known as johnnycake. It was made of cornmeal and water and baked on a griddle. (It was also called bannock.) Such a simple dish could be made under the most primitive of conditions. Later, as the country became more settled, other ingredients, like milk, shortening, and eggs, were added to the batter.
This spider johnnycake is an example of a more elaborate recipe, one that also exemplifies the kinds of cross-cultural dishes that combined Native American and European ingredients and cooking methods. A spider is a cast-iron skillet with legs so it could be placed right over hot coals. Originally, this johnnycake would have been made over an open fire or on top of the stove.
1 cup cornmeal
⅓ cup flour
¼ cup sugar
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 eggs, divided
2 tablespoons butter or lard
1 cup half-and-half
Mix together cornmeal, flour, sugar, milk, baking powder, salt, and two of the eggs well beaten.
Heat a spider and grease with butter or lard. Pour batter into hot spider. Beat remaining egg and combine with half-and-half. With the johnnycake already in the oven, spoon egg mixture over the top evenly. Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes.
Submitted by Mrs. Leslie N. Jones, Holcombe. “The added milk and egg settles in the middle of the cake and makes it moist and good,” she wrote. “With a salad and vegetable that spider johnnycake makes a delicious meal.”
Cornbread contains a higher proportion of white flour than johnnycake and is baked in pans, muffin tins, or the old-fashioned ear-of-corn shaped tins.
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 cup sifted flour
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg
1 cup milk
¼ cup shortening
Sift together dry ingredients into a bowl. Add egg, milk, and shortening. Beat with an egg beater for about 1 minute; do not overbeat.
Pour batter into greased 8-inch square pan or into greased muffin tins. Bake at 425 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes. Serve warm with butter, syrup, creamed chicken, fish, or gravy.
Submitted by Georgya Tatreau, Platteville
2 cups graham flour
½ cup white flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 egg, beaten
1½ cups buttermilk
½ cup molasses
1 cup currants
Combine flours, baking soda, salt, and sugar. Beat in egg, then buttermilk and molasses. Mix in currants. Pour batter into 3 greased 1-pound cans or a large bowl. Place cloth over pudding and under the steamer cover. Steam 1 hour and 20 minutes or until done.
Ruth Weber (Mrs. Harland) Huebner, Oconomowoc, submitted this recipe. She still had the old family steamer used to make this bread.
½ cup butter, softened
½ cup sugar
2 eggs, unbeaten
½ cup molasses
1 teaspoon baking soda
1½ cups flour
1 teaspoon ginger
1 cup sour milk (see page 267) or cold water
Cream butter and sugar together. Blend in eggs. Combine molasses and baking soda and beat together thoroughly; add to butter mixture. Blend in flour combined with ginger alternately with sour milk. Pour into a greased 9-inch square pan and bake at 350 degrees about 40 minutes.
Submitted by Elinore L. Loveland, Platteville. “The secret of having it light and tender,” she reported, “is in beating the soda and molasses together thoroughly and in not beating the eggs.”
Gingerbread was a popular quick bread in nineteenth-century America and was usually spicier than the English recipe. This very old recipe may be served plain or with an icing or whipped cream, ice cream, or a sauce.
½ cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup molasses
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda 2 teaspoons ginger
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon cloves
¾ teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
Cream butter and sugar; add beaten eggs and molasses. Sift flour, soda, spices, and salt together 3 times. Add to butter-eggs mixture alternately with the buttermilk, beating well after each addition.
Bake in a greased loaf pan at 350 degrees about 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Submitted by Mrs. Claire Rood, Shawano. She pointed out that raisins and nuts can be added if desired.
Mother’s Cornbread
Two cups Indian, one cup wheat,
One cup sour milk, one cup sweet;
One good egg that you will beat,
Half a cup molasses, too.
Half a cup sugar add thereto;
With one spoon of butter new.
Salt and soda each a spoon,
Mix it quickly, bake it soon.
Then you’ll have corn bread complete
Best of all corn bread you meet.
Good enough for any King
It will make your boy’s eyes shine,
If he’s like that boy of mine;
If you have a dozen boys
To increase your household joys,
Double, then, this rule, I should,
And you’ll have two corn cakes good
When you’ve nothing nice for tea,
This the very thing will be.
All the men that I have seen
Say it is, of all cakes, queen,
That a husband home may bring:
Warming up the human stone,
Cheering up the hearts you love;
And only Tyndale can explain
The links between corn bread and brain;
Get a husband what he likes
And save a hundred household strikes. •
Submitted by Mrs. Elmer Hare, Dalton.
Orange peel of 3 oranges, cut very fine
1 cup sugar
About 4 tablespoons water
2½ cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup milk
Pinch salt
½ teaspoon cloves
¾ teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
Combine thinly cut orange peel, sugar, and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Cook until mixture is a syrup and sugar is dissolved. Cool.
Combine flour with baking powder and salt. Add to syrup alternately with milk, a little at a time. Mix well after each addition.
Bake in a greased 9-inch bread pan at 350 degrees about 40 minutes.
Norma J. Kolthoff, Madison, submitted this recipe for a specialty of the Seven Gables Inn in Lake Geneva. The Inn, which operated from 1915 to 1925, was owned by her great uncle, Josiah Barfield, and his wife, Genevieve. To fill the requests made for the recipe, the Barfields kept a supply typed on 3- by 5-inch cards on hand to pass out. Ms. Kolthoff’s mother appended a note saying she would add an egg to the batter.
2 cups All-Bran cereal
⅔ cup prune juice
⅔ cup milk
1 tablespoon shortening
½ cup sugar
1 egg
1¼ cups flour
¼ teaspoon salt
1½ teaspoons baking soda
⅔ cup chopped cooked prunes
⅓ cup chopped nuts
Combine cereal, prune juice, and milk. Let stand.
Cream shortening and sugar. Add egg and beat well. Add cereal mixture and mix well. Blend in flour, salt, baking soda, prunes, and nuts. Mix only until flour is incorporated.
Bake in well-greased loaf pan at 325 degrees for 1 hour and 20 minutes.
Submitted by Gladys Gauthier, Oconto Falls.
1½ cups (½ pound) dried apricots
1 cup water
2¼ cups flour
¾ cups sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
¾ cup coarsely chopped nuts
1 egg, well beaten
1 cup buttermilk
3 tablespoons melted butter
Wash, drain, and coarsely chop apricots. Combine with water in a heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer uncovered 10 minutes or until water is absorbed. Set aside to cool.
Blend flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Mix in nuts. Combine egg, buttermilk, and butter with the apricots; blend well. Make a well in center of dry ingredients and add the apricot mixture all at once. Stir only enough to moisten the dry ingredients.
Turn into a 9½-inch loaf pan that has been greased on the bottom only; spread batter evenly to corners. Bake at 350 degrees about 1 hour or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.
Cool in pan on a rack 10 minutes, then turn out and cool completely.
Submitted by Mrs. R. J. Burgoyne, Plymouth.
1¼ cups plus 1 tablespoon flour, divided
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar, divided
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ cup lard
3 eggs, divided
1 cup sour cream, divided
1 quart berries or sliced apples
Mix together 1¼ cups flour, baking powder, 1 tablespoon sugar, salt, and baking soda. Using a pastry cutter, blend in lard until like coarse crumbs. Add 1 egg, beaten, and ¼ cup sour cream. Mix until dough holds together. Pat into the bottom and sides of a greased 9- by 13-inch pan.
Mix remaining flour, sugar, sour cream, and eggs, beaten. Add berries or apples. Pour into prepared pan. Bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 degrees and continue baking until custard is set.
Submitted by Marion Philippi (Mrs. John A.) Urich, Madison.
1 pound candied fruit
½ pound brown sugar
1½ teaspoons salt
1 cup brewed tea
4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
Combine candied fruit, sugar, salt, and tea. Let stand overnight.
Combine flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Add to candied fruit mixture. Mix well.
Bake in two large, greased loaf pans at 350 degrees for about 1 hour. Serve thinly sliced and buttered.
Submitted by Mrs. Stanley Holland, Mineral Point.
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons baking powder
¼ cup sugar
¼ pound butter
1 egg, beaten
½ cup milk
1 cup dried currants
Sugar
Sift together flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar. Cut in butter as for pie crust. Add egg, milk, and currants. Knead about 12 strokes and roll out about ½-inch thick. Sprinkle with sugar and cut with a cookie cutter. Place on greased baking sheet and let stand about 10 minutes.
Bake at 425 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes. Serve warm with butter and honey or marmalade.
Submitted by Hope C. (Mrs. R. H.) Loveland, Cassville.
Whether they were called griddle cakes, lefse, latkes, crepes, flapjacks, or pfannkuchen, pancakes appeared with regularity on earlier Wisconsin tables at all meals, not only at breakfast.
They were filling and easy to cook on a stove or over an open fire. “We had a griddle that covered the first two front lids of the old cookstove,” Cecelia E. Nieman of Muskego remembered. “We had a good wood fire underneath and pancakes were golden brown and plate size.” Not least, pancakes frequently were a means of using leftovers such as mashed potatoes or sour milk.
The basic pancake, of course, consists of flour, milk or water, and eggs beaten into a batter—thick or thin according to taste—and baked on a griddle or frying pan. The proportions and ingredients (more eggs, milk for water, or cream for milk) and the embellishments (spices, fruit, toppings) were determined by seasonal supplies, the state of the family’s finances, and the family’s Old World traditions.
A thin pancake was the favorite of many European groups—French, German, Slovak, Norwegian, Swedish. They were served flat or spread with a variety of things jelly, syrup, butter, fruit—and rolled up.
Making buckwheat pancakes on a wood-burning cookstove, 1949. WHi Image ID 6844
1 cup melted butter
1 cup sugar
3 eggs, beaten until lemon colored
1 cup heavy cream or half-and-half
1 cup flour
Grated rind of 1 lemon
Beat all ingredients together. Batter will be very thin.
Heat a heavy iron skillet and grease lightly with a piece of lard wrapped in cloth; just barely rub the bottom and sides of the skillet. Pour in ⅔ cup batter, tipping skillet so batter runs up the sides. When pancake loses its gloss, turn by gently loosening the sides. It will brown quickly. Fold into fourths and place in a heated casserole in a 250 degree oven. Repeat until all the batter is used up.
Serve with syrup or thickened fruit juice as a dessert.
Submitted by Betty Hanson and Mrs. Sanford Hanson, Sturgeon Bay.
1½ cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1¼ teaspoons cinnamon
2 tablespoons sugar
4 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 cups milk
Sift dry ingredients together. Beat into beaten eggs. Add butter and milk. Bake on a hot griddle. Serve with lingonberries.
Submitted by Betty Hanson and Mrs. Sanford Hanson, Sturgeon Bay. Both these pancakes were served for many years at the family’s summer resort in Door County. The Norwegian pancakes recipe belonged to Susanna Beskow Hanson, who began cooking for the city folks who had summer houses on Sturgeon Bay after her husband’s death in 1895. “Susanna had become a Norwegian,” Betty Hanson wrote, “when a sailor named Lalland rescued her from a shipwreck in which her Russian parents were lost.” Susanna’s son, John, married a Swedish girl, Matilda Peterson, who helped Susanna occasionally. Eventually, John and Matilda converted their fruit farm into a summer resort.
Thicker pancakes required more flour and in some recipes, like this one, a leavening agent.
1 egg, beaten until light
1 tablespoon melted butter or bacon grease
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
2 cups flour
Pinch salt
Milk
Combine egg, butter, cream of tartar, flour, salt, and enough milk to make a batter that can be poured from a pitcher. Pour batter onto a hot, oiled griddle; bake until bubbles appear. Turn and brown on other side. Spread hot flapjacks generously with butter and thick maple syrup and stack on a platter. Cut like a pie and serve with additional maple syrup, thick cream, and nutmeg.
Submitted by Mrs. Ora P. Taylor, Drummond.
Breakfast for Two
NON-ENGLISH-SPEAKING IMMIGRANTS encountered many difficulties in their first days in the state because of the language gap. Not all of them were unpleasant. One Danish settler, who arrived in 1892, recalled the breakfast served at a hotel in Thorp:
In the morning, when we got up, we still had some butter and bread in our satchels, which we ate at that time. When we came downstairs a fellow asked us if we wanted breakfast. Of course, not being familiar with the English language we did not know what breakfast meant, but told him in good Dane, that we would like a cup of coffee. The landlord being as familiar with the Danish language as we were with English, rushed us into the dining room, and soon a young lady came with pancakes, two or three different kinds of meat, coffee and so forth. There was no use for us to protest and tell her that we already had our breakfast at our room, because she did not understand our language, so we decided the best we could do was to eat all we could out of it, in order to get our money’s worth. •
1 egg
1¼ cups buttermilk
1 tablespoon molasses
¼ cup melted shortening
1 cup sifted flour
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ cup yellow cornmeal
In a large bowl, combine egg, buttermilk, molasses, and shortening. Add flour sifted with salt, baking soda, and baking powder. Add cornmeal and stir until batter is slightly lumpy. Bake on a hot griddle, turning once. Serve with butter and honey.
Submitted by Mrs. Hugh Severson, Greenwood.
2 eggs, beaten
½ cup sour milk (see page 267) or buttermilk
2 cups milk
⅓ cup sugar
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1½ cups flour
½ teaspoon vanilla
¼ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon cinnamon
Blend all ingredients thoroughly in a blender. Pour batter into lightly greased electric skillet at 325 to 350 degrees. Bake until bubbles appear; turn and continue baking until done. Sprinkle with sugar or jam. Serves six.
Submitted by Roger W. Gunnerson, Washington Island, who used modern appliances to make this recipe brought from Iceland to Washington Island in 1882 by his grandmother. Mr. Gunnerson sometimes added shortening to the batter and then baked the cakes on a dry skillet. “I have been told by my grandmother,” he noted, “that cinnamon was one of the most highly prized of the spices they used.”
Sourdough pancakes were a fixture in logging camps. The batter was mixed the night before and needed only to be stirred down and baked the next morning to stoke up the lumberjacks for a good morning’s work.
1 cup Sourdough Starter (see below)
2 tablespoons sugar, or to taste
Salt to taste
2 cups warm milk or water
½ to ¾ cup buckwheat flour
¼ cup cornmeal
White flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
4 tablespoons melted shortening
The night before, combine starter, sugar, salt, milk, buckwheat flour, and cornmeal. Add enough white flour to make a “runny” batter. Place batter in a deep bowl (so it won’t run over) and let stand at room temperature overnight.
The next morning, stir down the batter. Add baking soda, baking powder, and enough more white flour to make a medium batter. Stir in melted shortening. Bake on a hot griddle. Stir batter frequently while making the pancakes. Serves about 6.
1⅓ cups flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1 package (¼ ounce) active dry yeast
2½ cups lukewarm water
Combine flour, sugar, salt, and undissolved yeast in a large bowl. Gradually add lukewarm water and beat 2 minutes at medium speed, scraping bowl occasionally. Cover and let stand at room temperature 4 days. Stir down daily.
To replenish after taking out the starter for the pancakes or bread, add 1½ cups lukewarm water, ¾ cup flour, and 1½ teaspoons sugar to remaining starter. Beat for 1 minute at medium speed. Cover and let stand, stirring down daily, until needed.
Submitted by Leona (Mrs. Raymond) Shirek, Junction City, whose uncles, Frank and John Hiner, were cooks in lumber camps near Vesper and Arpin.
2 or 3 apples
1½ cups sifted flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
⅔ teaspoon salt
2 eggs, separated
1⅓ cups buttermilk
2 tablespoons melted, cooled butter
Peel, core, and thinly slice the apples. Sift together flour, baking soda, and salt. Beat egg whites until stiff but not dry. In another bowl, beat egg yolks with unwashed beater and add buttermilk. Stir in sifted dry ingredients and cooled butter. Fold in egg whites.
Spoon batter onto moderately hot, well greased griddle and arrange apple slices on each pancake. When underside is lightly browned, turn and bake until apples are cooked thoroughly. Makes 16 small to medium pancakes.
Alexa Young of Madison submitted this recipe that her mother, whose parents came from Pomerania, perfected. Her parents’ farm in Dodge County included a bearing orchard: “For these pancakes, Mother preferred either Wealthy apples or an unnamed old, flat variety, which she had named ‘those big pie apples.’ Both were of a soft variety, which, when moderately ripe, cooked up mellow and juicy on top of these pancakes.”
Potato pancakes can be made in many ways. Probably every cook who makes them has his or her special recipe that makes them just a bit different than the neighbor’s. Some recipes call for mashed potatoes, the best known of that variety being lefse. Some recipes submitted noted that the secret of making lefse was the same as for pie crusts: handling the dough as little as possible. Others call for kneading the thick batter until it is no longer sticky. The ingredients are minimal: mashed potatoes, salt, cream or condensed milk, and shortening.
5 large potatoes
½ cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons melted butter
1 teaspoon salt
Flour
Boil potatoes, peel, and put through a ricer. Add cream, butter, and salt. Cool. Add ½ cup flour for each cup of mashed potatoes and mix until smooth.
For each lefse, form about ¼ cup of dough into a small ball. Roll out as thinly as possible on a floured board.
Bake on an ungreased lefse griddle over moderate heat (about 400 degrees) until light brown. Turn and brown other side. Place on a cloth until cold.
For serving, cut each lefse into four pieces. May be spread with butter or cinnamon and sugar.
Submitted by Mrs. Albert Larson, Manitowoc.
Mashed potatoes mixed with meat was a supper dish for some.
¼ pound pork sausage meat
1½ cups mashed potatoes
1 egg, beaten
Salt to taste
Crumble and brown sausage in a frying pan; drain off and reserve drippings. Add sausage and some of the drippings to potatoes. Mix in salt and beaten egg. Form into patties and fry, browning both sides nicely.
Submitted by Dagmar P. Noel, Waukesha.
Pancakes made from raw potatoes are typically German and were served in many ways. They were a main dish with applesauce with or without bratwurst or other sausage; they accompanied other meats; with syrup or jam, or just with sugar, they were a breakfast dish or a sweet.
2 cups peeled and grated raw potatoes
2 eggs, beaten
1 tablespoon flour
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
Mix all ingredients well. Bake on a greased, hot griddle like pancakes.
Submitted by Mrs. Freida Hirsch, Wisconsin Dells, who added that these potato pancakes were always served the day the family completed the potato harvest: “Several hundred bushels were always picked up by hand as we followed the plow down the row.”
Many Jewish cooks favor the addition of onion when making potato latkes.
4 large potatoes, grated
1 small onion, grated
3 eggs, beaten
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons flour
¼ teaspoon baking powder
Cooking oil for frying
Sour cream or applesauce
Combine potatoes and onion and mix well. Beat in eggs, salt, flour, and baking powder.
Heat about ¼ inch cooking oil in a heavy pan over moderately hot fire. Drop batter by spoonfuls into oil and fry on both sides until brown. A large mixing spoon full makes thin pancakes; more batter makes thicker ones.
Serve, drained, with sour cream or applesauce.
These may also be baked in muffin tins or a baking pan. For muffins, heat greased tins and fill ¾ full; bake at 400 degrees 1 hour or until brown. Or heat in a 375 degree oven a 9- by 13-inch baking pan containing ¼-inch cooking oil; add batter spread thinly and bake until well browned, 20 to 40 minutes.
Submitted by Mrs. Herman Tuchman, Milwaukee, who noted that these pancakes are traditional for Chanukah, the Feast of Lights.
French crepes are well-known as a dessert, but other groups have recipes for ending a meal with thin pancakes. These are close to an omelet.
¼ cup butter, softened
¼ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
5 eggs, separated
¼ cup sifted flour
½ cup milk
¼ teaspoon vanilla
Sugar and cinnamon
Unsalted butter
Cream together the butter, sugar, and salt. Add egg yolks and beat well. Stir in flour and then the milk. Beat egg whites until stiff but not dry; add vanilla. Fold into the batter.
Using unsalted butter, grease a moderately hot iron skillet. Pour in a scant ¼ cup of batter. Do not tip pan or spread; these pancakes will be 5 to 6 inches across and about ¼-inch thick when baked.
Brown lightly on one side only. Lift gently and place cooked side down on a flat baking dish. Set in a 300 degree oven while making second pancake. Sprinkle uncooked side of first pancake with sugar and cinnamon and top with second pancake. Continue until there are five layers, then start another stack. Bake stacks an additional 15 to 20 minutes or until top is delicately brown. Serve at once.
Submitted by Darlene Kronschnabel, Greenleaf.
Boiled rice was sometimes an ingredient of pancakes or waffles, too. This is the way a recipe for German rice waffles appeared in an old recipe file:
“Boil ½ pound of rice in milk until it becomes thoroughly soft. Then remove it from the fire, stirring it constantly, and adding a little at a time 1 quart of sifted flour, 5 beaten eggs, 2 spoonfuls of yeast, ½ pound of melted butter, a little salt and a teacupful of warm milk. Set the batter in a warm place, and when risen, bake in the ordinary way.”
Submitted by Mrs. Betty E. Harnack, Janesville, who found it in the recipe collection of her ancestors who settled in Rock County in the 1870s.
The memoirs of many early Wisconsin residents contain references to a crock in the kitchen always filled with doughnuts or fry cakes. And a platter of them was standard fare at most meals in the logging camps. Usually, dough prepared by frying was—and still is—a sweet dish. But not always. Pieces of bread dough were fried on occasion, usually as a snack on baking day.
Mrs. Ruszella Christensen, who was eighty years old and living in Freeport, Illinois, when she sent in material for this book, reported that fried bread dough was called “pigs ears” in her family. “First take a piece of white bread dough,” she wrote, “a little bigger than a good-sized egg, but first have a frying pan with melted hot lard a couple inches deep, and pull this piece of dough long and thin about the size of a pig ear. Drop in the hot lard and turn when light brown. You will be surprised how light and fluffy this will get as it bakes or cooks....
“When I was short of bread I often baked them long before this bread was ready for pans. I would make a couple dozen; half of them I served plain with the main meal and the other half I would roll in sugar and they would take the place of dessert. By the time they had their potatoes, vegetables, and meat and the pigs ears, they would be filled up.”
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup sugar
1 cup milk
About 3 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
Lard for deep-frying
Whole cloves and stick cinnamon
Pour melted butter over beaten eggs, then stir in sugar and milk. Sift together flour and baking powder and stir in, mixing well.
Roll dough into strips about little-finger thick; don’t handle the dough too much but get it smooth, adding more flour, a little at a time on top to avoid sticky spots. Form rolls into circles and pinch together.
Deep fry in very hot lard into which a few whole cloves and pieces of stick cinnamon have been added. Turn cakes over as soon as they rise and turn once again. Drain on paper towels.
Submitted by Marion Tubbs Lawson of New York City. Mrs. Lawson added that besides the usual shape, her mother, a resident of Elkhorn, wound the strips of dough into figure eights. “The use of spices in the lard gave an indescribably subtle flavor as well as kept the lard sweet,” she wrote. “My mother had two large blown-glass candy jars on a curly maple chest of drawers in the dining room, this chest originally made for her aunt in Winooski, Sheboygan County, in 1846. The jars were kept full of fried cakes and available to the hand of husband, children, and guests. When she made them for Congregational church sales they were always spoken for before they ever got to the sales table.”
Women make fry bread at the dedication of a Ho-Chunk village near Wisconsin Dells, 1956.
WHi Image ID 42192
Fry bread is a favorite in Native American households, served frequently for family meals and always at feasts. Rosetta Mallory of Milwaukee, a Ho-Chunk, warned when submitting this recipe that if the shortening gets too hot, the bread won’t get done on the inside. These are also called dough gods.
12 cups flour
3 cups lukewarm water
¼ to ½ teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
Shortening for deep-frying
Put flour into a 6-quart bowl and push up high along the sides so there is a deep well in the center. Add water combined with salt and baking powder, pouring it into the prepared well. Mix with a spoon until the dough will not absorb any more flour. Remove spoon and knead well in the bowl. Let stand 1 hour.
Heat shortening in a large frying pan until very hot, but not smoking. With a knife, cut a piece of dough about the size of a small fist, and with floured hands, stretch it out flat. Drop into hot shortening. Brown both sides, turning once.
Submitted by Mrs. Rosetta Mallory, Milwaukee.
Raised doughnuts have many names. In Polish they are known as paczski and may be made plain or filled with jam.
¼ cup active dry yeast
2 cups milk, scalded and cooled to lukewarm
About 7 cups flour, divided
4 egg yolks
1 egg
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla
Grated rind of ½ lemon
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ pound butter, melted
About 2 cups very thick prune jam (optional)
Shortening for deep-frying
Granulated or powdered sugar
Dissolve yeast in lukewarm milk. Add 2 cups flour. Let stand about 30 minutes.
Beat egg yolks, egg, sugar, vanilla, lemon rind, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon until light. Add to yeast-flour sponge. Add melted butter and about 5 cups flour. Blend well. Cover with a cloth and let stand in a warm place until double in bulk.
Turn out on a floured board and pat out with hands until about ½-inch thick. Cut with doughnut cutter, cover and let rise until double. Drop into deep, hot fat (365 degrees) and fry 3 minutes. Roll in granulated or powdered sugar and serve warm.
For filled doughnuts, pat out half the dough into a round about ¼-inch thick. Place ½ to ¾ teaspoon jam in dollops over the dough, leaving space to cut a circle with a cutter. (You could lightly mark the circles with the cutter to be sure you get the jam in the center.) Roll out remaining dough ¼-inch thick and place over jam-spotted round. Cut, centering the cutter over the jam. (The two layers will be sealed in the cutting process.) Let rise until double and fry as for unfilled doughnuts.
Hedwig A. (Mrs. Victor) Semran, Milwaukee, submitted this recipe, which had been handed down in her family which came from Poland in 1919. “These doughnuts are made on Shrove Tuesday which is the day before Ash Wednesday,” she wrote. “So this is the last big feed before the long six-week fast.”
Danes and Germans make a raised doughnut that are round and made in a special pan that looks like a cross between a frying pan and a muffin tin. These may be leavened with yeast or baking powder. The Germans call these fuetjens and sometimes add cardamom to the batter.
3 eggs, separated
2 teaspoons sugar
½ teaspoon salt
2 cups buttermilk
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
Shortening
Beat egg yolks. Add sugar, salt, and buttermilk. Sift together flour, baking soda, and baking powder and stir in. Fold in egg whites that have been beaten stiff but not dry.
Heat an æbelskiver pan and put a small amount of shortening in each of the 7 cups. Fill the cups ⅔ full with dough. Cook until bubbly. Turn with a fork and brown other side. Serve hot with sugar or syrup.
Chopped apples or currants may be added to the dough before cooking.
Submitted by Mrs. Freida Hirsch, Wisconsin Dells.
Potatoes also found their way into doughnuts.
1 cup freshly mashed potatoes
1 cup sugar
1 cup milk
2 eggs, beaten
3 tablespoons melted butter
3½ cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
Lard for deep-frying
Cinnamon and sugar
Combine potatoes, sugar, milk, eggs, and butter. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Add to potato mixture and blend well.
Drop by teaspoonfuls into very hot, deep lard. Fry until brown. When done, drain and roll in a mixture of cinnamon and sugar.
Submitted by Mrs. Doris Reichert, West Allis.
Edible blossoms and leaves, dipped into a batter and fried into a fritter, was once a common dish in the days before pesticides and other chemical sprays. They have made a comeback in recent years, thank to organic growers and New American cooks. If you want to try this, be sure the blooms have not been sprayed. Elderberry blossoms take well to this, as do squash blossoms, both of which can be found in season at more and more farmers’ markets.
2 eggs, separated
1½ cups milk
About 2 cups flour
Pinch salt
Elderberry blossoms picked with the dew on and patted dry
Beat egg yolks and beat in milk. Add enough flour to make a medium-thick pancake batter. (A spoonful of batter held above the mixing bowl should run in a 1½-inch length, then drop in triangular plops.) Beat until smooth. Cover and refrigerate 2 hours if possible. Just before using, beat egg whites until stiff but not dry and fold in.
Dip well-dried blossoms into batter and deep-fry at about 350 degrees. Delicious served with hot cherry sauce. These may also be dusted with powdered sugar.
Submitted by Mrs. Floyd Myron, Milwaukee.
One cup of sugar,
One of milk,
Two eggs beaten
Fine as silk.
Salt and nutmeg,
Lemon will do,
Of baking powder
Teaspoons two.
Lightly stir
The flour in;
Roll on pie board,
Not too thin.
Cut in diamonds,
Twists or rings;
Drop with care
The doughy things
Into fat that
Briskly swells
Evenly the
Spongy cells.
Watch with care
The time for turning;
Get them brown,
Just short of burning.
Roll in sugar;
Serve when cool.
This for donuts
Is the rule. •
Taught by Notre Dame nuns at Holy Cross School, Blue Mound Road, Milwaukee, in the 1890s. Submitted by Carlyne M. (Mrs. Otto) Klein, Burlington.
Breads of various kinds were not only a mainstay of many diets in times past, they were the basis for snacks, too. And none was wasted; stale bread was used up in one way or another.
Many Wisconsinites have fond memories of treats associated with bread. David J. Borth, Bayfield, remembered that when his mother “wanted a special treat for her children, she took one third of a batch of white bread dough. Mixed in some extra sugar and two eggs. After this mixture had risen, she worked it down and put some rolled out dough in cake pans, pushing down the center. Then she would put in applesauce or pitted prunes. When this rose, she baked it. By golly that was good on a cold winter’s night.”
For Mrs. Robert Sanford, River Falls, when she was growing up, “the main snack at our home was bread, milk, and onions. A bowl of bread and milk eaten with raw onions was almost a must after farm chores in the evening.”
And Rebecca Trumpy Gillings, Redgranite, whose family was Pennsylvania-Dutch, remembered that “there was always a pot of coffee on the back of the stove. Sometimes when we got home from school we would put a slice of homemade bread on a plate, pour hot coffee over it, scoop thick cream from the top of the bowl of milk in the pantry onto that, sprinkle sugar over the cream—and umm-mmm was that good at four o’clock on a cold winter day!”
The classic way to use stale bread was to fry it in some manner. The best-known is what we call French toast and the French Canadians call pain perdu, which means lost bread.
2 large eggs, separated
⅛ teaspoon salt
½ cup cold milk
¼ teaspoon vanilla or brandy or rum
⅛ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ pound butter
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
6 to 8 slices of stale white or French bread
4 tablespoons sugar
Jam or jelly
In a deep mixing bowl, beat egg whites with salt until stiff. Add yolks and continue beating while pouring in milk, vanilla or brandy, and nutmeg. Mix well.
Place butter and oil in large iron skillet on medium heat. When the shortening is hot enough to brown a cube of bread in 60 seconds, slowly dip each slice of bread into egg mixture to coat on both sides and place in skillet. Fry on both sides, turning once, until browned.
Drain on absorbent paper. Sprinkle one side with sugar and spread the other with jam. Serve at once to 6 or 8.
Fry several slices at a time depending on size of skillet. May also be served with cinnamon-sugar or maple syrup.
Submitted by Mrs. Florence M. Vint, Springfield, Virginia, formerly of Milwaukee.
Stale bread or cake
Lard for deep-frying
Boiling milk
Powdered sugar or preserves
Cut bread or cake slices into rounds. Deep fry in hot lard to a light brown. Dip each slice in boiling milk to remove the grease; drain quickly and dust with powdered sugar or spread with preserves. Sweet wine sauce poured over them is very nice.
Submitted by Lynora Jean Harnack, Janesville. This was in an 1892 cookbook.
Stale bread could be made into pancakes, also.
2 slices of stale bread
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg, beaten
⅓ cup flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
Soak bread in buttermilk for one hour or longer. Break up bread with a spoon and beat until smooth. Add egg, flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Beat smooth.
Fry on a hot griddle as for pancakes. The recipe may be doubled or tripled.
Submitted by Kathryn Parkinson, Madison.
Stale bread combined with poppy seeds provided this special dish for Eastern Europeans.
Milk
Homemade bread at least a day old, sliced
Ground poppy seeds mixed with sugar to taste
Scald milk and let cool to lukewarm. Dip slices of bread into warm milk and let excess drip off. As each piece is dipped and drained, sprinkle with poppy seed mixture and layer in a heavy earthenware or ironstone bowl. Continue until ingredients are used up.
Cover top with a plate and press down lightly until the milk oozes up to the top. If necessary, add more milk just to cover bread. Let stand 3 to 4 hours.
This tastes best when served slightly warm and may be garnished with cooked prunes. Leftovers may be refrigerated and served cold.
Mrs. Joseph Meinholz, Eau Claire, submitted this recipe, which was traditionally served at her house on Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
