Have you heard the expression, 'light bread'? Refers to yeast bread (as opposed to biscuits, cornbread, etc.). Yeast breads have a 'lighter' texture. I think it's a mostly southern USA term. Anyway, I would let rise until doubled.

Less dense.

I never heard it before either. :)

Googling, I found an old book [among many others] called Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus: A Collection of Practical Recipes... By Rufus Esteswhich charming title makes me want to find a copy for my own, even though it's digitized and available to all. ETA--It's from 1911. Estes was a Pullman Private Car Chef, which makes sense of some of the different kinds of rolls. And there are lots of digitized reproductions to be had.

He talks about proofing cake yeast (i.e., live yeast cube) in a preferment to make rolls, and letting it rise until "very light". Then after making the finished dough balls, "Set them close together in a buttered baking pan, let rise light, and bake in a quick oven." My mother talks about fast or slow ovens. When I proof yeast with sugar (rather than flour), it usually rises 6-8 times its volume (depending on how quickly I catch it). So I infer that "very light" means big and puffy. :)

Other bread doughs are just set to rise. Further down the page, there are graham rolls that rise to very light. And for breakfast cakes, the eggs are beaten light. There is, therefore, an element of foaminess, structurally lifted volume, in the concept. We might equate it with the size of the holes in the finished product, I think.

Doubled is probably right, but maybe on the generously risen, "light" side. :)

Thank you all! I first saw this the other day when I was reading a very old cookbook with recipes sent in, like a compilation recipe book of some organization used for a fund raiser. I thought that maybe it was just a mistake which I find a lot in those type books. But then I was looking at another old recipe for sweet bread and it said the same thing. Then I google searched and saw the term was used.

I guess then the term means that it is not dense...or light and fluffy.

Ci_lantro has it. It's an old southern term for raised yeast breads. According to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, the old FL crackers also called raised bread "wasp's nest bread" because of the contrast to the dense texture of the cornbread/pone/hoecake that was their standard form of bread.

Never heard the term "light bread" used for yeast breads....but then I m not southern.
Light means airy. Have you never read directions to "whip the cream until light."? Or "her biscuits are so light they almost float away"
Surely though, you have heard of bread that was heavy. Well that's the opposite of light!

Not heavy versus light bread...they are saying to let the dough rise until it is "light". I suppose that now we go with the instructions of "allow dough to double in size". I would say that "allow to rise until light" is very opened for interpretation. I am from the south if you call Texas as being from the south.

Both my maternal and paternal grandmothers always referred to loaves of white bread as light bread.

I heard the expression growing up in Oklahoma but I don't recall who used it. My paternal grandmother was from northern N. Mexico/ Southeastern Colorado. Mom was from southern Missouri. I may have heard the term while visiting her relatives in MO. Then again, Mom & Dad owned several restaurants with a parade of different cooks from who knows where all; I might have become acquainted with the term through one of/ some of them.

'Light bread' makes perfect sense to me if you're from a region where biscuits & cornbread are common fare. At home, we usually had biscuits for homemade bread (before the restaurant business years). Yeast rolls were more common for the holidays.

Somehow we got off the question that I asked. I'm not asking what the difference between light versus heavy breads at all, that's not the instructions that are in question. Maybe I didn't word my first post very well and was confusing? What I wanted to try and understand was what did they mean in the recipe when the recipe says to "allow dough to rise until light"...at what point is dough considered to be light enough to be at the right point? I think others have said to just allow the dough to double in size and that would be the same thing as "allow to rise until light".

Well, I wouldn't have thought a thing about this before Christmas, but might now. I helped my grandson bake a breakfast bread (King Arthur's recipe). The dough doubled but never did get "light" and puffy, but rather stayed what I would call "dense". The bread ring came out wonderful and didn't last 5 minutes once it was tasted, but the rising was different.

CA Kate, Breakfast breads or "quick breads" are not supposed to have the texture of sandwich bread or rolls. They are normally dense.

I think we've got it all sorted out. Just odd that of all the recipes that I'd read, I had never seen that instruction....it just had me questioning what that meant. Thanks!

You can tell when the bread has risen enough to bake when you poke at the dough with a finger and the indentation stays, doesn't immediately pop back.

Biscuits which are thought of as quick breads risen with baking powder or soda are supposed to be very light....I make breakfast bread or sweet rolls of yeast which are very "light" and fluffy.

And then there are things which depend entirely on eggs for loft....like a souffle or a sponge cake. Both should be very "light". A heavy souffle is not a good thing!

It used to be, back in the "olden days" that bread was either light of dark. No wheat or rye, they just spoke of dark bread. You would see on a sandwich menu "ham and Swiss cheese on dark bread"....and at breakfast you would be asked if you wanted dark or light bread for your toast. The light had nothing to do with the texture of the bread but rather with the color.

Arkansas girl, I think it has to do with language shifts. Your recipe was an old one and the cook book I had is also. Yours was probably the common way of saying it at the time. My cookbook is one intended for new brides (she married in 1950) (even though Dad was the cook). It used both terms, so probably was at the in between of both terms.

Sherry, this recipe was for a double-rise yeast bread, hardly a quick bread. I've made a number of breakfast yeast breads over the years and have never had one double-rise with this texture. But, as I said, the end result was delicious, so I guess it was OK.