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Brown Bread
Two cups Indian meal, two cups Graham flour, two cups sour milk, two teaspoons of soda, a little salt, one cup molasses. Beat well together and steam in a buttered pan with a tube in the center, for two hours.
A standard steamed brown bread of the late nineteenth century, leavened entirely by soda reacting with sour milk and molasses. The original assumes a tube mould and a covered kettle of simmering water.
- Indian mealThis is cornmeal, yellow or white, stone-ground if you can get it. Fine or medium grind gives a smoother crumb than coarse polenta-style meal.
- Graham flourA coarse whole-wheat flour milled from the entire kernel, named for Sylvester Graham. Ordinary whole-wheat flour is the closest current equivalent; it is slightly finer, and the loaf will be a little less craggy.
- Sour milkNot spoiled milk but naturally soured raw milk, mildly acidic. Buttermilk is the direct substitute; failing that, two cups of milk with two tablespoons of lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left ten minutes.
- The sodaTwo teaspoons is a lot for four cups of meal and flour, but the acid load from two cups of sour milk plus a cup of molasses will take it. Mix and get it into the mould promptly, since the reaction starts at once and does not wait for the steam.
- The mouldA buttered tube pan is specified so heat reaches the centre of a dense batter. A pudding mould with a central tube of at least two to three quarts works, as does a well-buttered coffee tin, but the tube version cooks more evenly. Fill no more than two-thirds full and cover the top with buttered foil or a cloth tied down, so condensation does not pool on the loaf.
- SteamingSet the mould on a rack in a deep pot, add boiling water to come halfway up the sides, cover, and keep it at a bare simmer. Top up with boiling water as it evaporates; two hours is right, and a skewer should come out clean.
- MolassesUse unsulphured light or dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is markedly more bitter and unlikely to be what the original cook meant.
- Yield and servingOne loaf, roughly eight to ten slices. Turn it out while warm, let it firm up for fifteen minutes, and cut with a thin blade or a length of thread. Traditionally eaten with butter at breakfast, or alongside baked beans.
Steamed brown bread belongs to New England, where cornmeal was cheap and abundant, molasses arrived by the barrel through the West Indies trade, and wheat flour was the expensive ingredient to be stretched. Steaming rather than baking suited a kitchen where a kettle was always on and firing the oven for a single loaf was wasteful. The Graham flour points to the mid-century health reform movement: Sylvester Graham preached unsifted whole-grain flour from the 1830s onward, and his name eventually became simply the trade term for coarse whole-wheat. A loaf like this, paired with baked beans, is the standard Saturday-night and Sunday-breakfast pattern of the region.