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Graham Bread
4 cups boiling water. 2 tablespoons sugar. 1 tablespoon salt. 2 tablespoons Cottolene. 1 yeast cake dissolved in 1/2 cup lukewarm water. 8 cups Graham flour. 6 cups white flour.
PROCESS: Put sugar, salt and Cottolene in large mixing bowl. Pour on boiling water; when lukewarm add dissolved yeast cake. Sift together Graham and white flour, reserving one cup white flour for kneading. Add flour gradually to water mixture, stirring constantly; beat as mixture becomes stiff. Turn on a well-floured board and knead until dough is smooth and elastic. Return dough to bowl, cover and set to rise in a warm place. When dough has doubled its bulk, cut it down with a knife without removing from bowl; cover and set to rise again. When double in bulk, knead slightly, weigh dough and divide into one-pound loaves. Shape loaves, place two loaves in each well-greased, brick-shaped bread pan, brush between loaves with melted Cottolene. (There will be six loaves.) Cover and set to rise; when light, bake one hour in a "bread oven."
A large, straightforward yeast bread from the era of the cake-yeast-and-lard kitchen. The quantities are for a household baking day: six one-pound loaves at once.
- CottoleneA branded shortening of the period, made from cottonseed oil blended with beef suet and heavily advertised in cookbooks of this era; the brand being named twice in one short recipe suggests a promotional connection, though that cannot be confirmed from the page itself. Any solid vegetable shortening, or an equal weight of butter, does the same work; 2 tablespoons in 14 cups of flour is there for softness, not flavor.
- Yeast cakeOne cake of compressed yeast is roughly equivalent to 2 1/4 teaspoons (one packet) of active dry or instant yeast. For a dough this size two packets will give a more predictable rise, especially in a cool kitchen.
- Graham flourCoarse whole-wheat flour, milled with the bran and germ left in. Stone-ground whole wheat is the closest match; ordinary supermarket whole-wheat flour works but gives a finer crumb than intended.
- "Bread oven"An unhelpful phrase today; the book gives no temperature. A moderate oven of about 375F is a reasonable modern equivalent. Check for doneness before the full hour is up -- an internal temperature of about 200F means the loaf is finished -- bearing in mind that two loaves baked side by side in one pan will need longer than a single loaf. The long bake likely reflects the falling heat of a period range.
- Watch the water temperatureThe hinge of the recipe. Four cups of boiling water go onto the sugar, salt and shortening first and must cool to lukewarm, around 105-115F, before the yeast goes in; yeast begins to suffer above blood heat and dies at roughly 130-140F. Do not shortcut this by adding yeast to a warm-but-not-cool bowl.
- The second riseCutting the dough down with a knife in the bowl is simply a deflation; the modern equivalent is a fold or a punch-down. The double rise builds flavor and a more even crumb; it is worth keeping.
- Pans"Brick-shaped bread pan" holding two one-pound loaves side by side is uncommon now. Bake the six pounds of dough as six loaves in standard 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch pans, and skip the greasing between loaves.
- Scaling downHalving the recipe gives three loaves and fits an ordinary mixer and oven. Weighing the dough, as the original directs, is still the best way to get loaves that bake evenly together.
Graham flour and graham bread take their name from Sylvester Graham, the Presbyterian minister and dietary reformer of the 1830s who preached that coarse, unsifted wheat flour, home-baked and eaten slightly stale, was essential to health, and that white bread from a commercial baker was not. His name outlived his movement: graham flour became simply a grocery staple, and graham bread a wholesome-tasting counterweight to the white loaf rather than a moral position. The recipe's other period marker is Cottolene, a shortening marketed as a clean vegetable substitute for lard though it contained beef suet; a bread needing barely two tablespoons of fat names the brand twice.