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Excellent Graham Bread
One quart of bread sponge, one teacupful molasses, one smali teaspoonful soda, a little salt. Add about one pint of warm water and enough graham flour to stir with a spoon, pretty stiff; put it in the pans, let it rise and bake in a moderate oven.
A molasses-sweetened whole wheat loaf built on a batter, not a kneaded dough. The recipe assumes you already have a quart of active bread sponge sitting on the back of the stove, which is the one thing a modern kitchen has to supply deliberately.
- Bread spongeA quart of sponge is roughly 4 cups of a loose, foamy pre-ferment: mix about 2 cups white flour, 2 cups warm water and 2 teaspoons instant yeast (or a cup of active sourdough starter in place of the yeast), and leave it covered until bubbly and domed, 4 to 12 hours. It should smell yeasty and slightly sour, not sharply alcoholic.
- TeacupfulA teacupful in American books of this period is not a modern measuring cup; it is usually read as somewhere between a gill (1/2 cup) and about 3/4 cup, and usage varied from book to book. At the larger end that is a firmly dark, sweet loaf, so scale back toward 1/2 cup if you want the wheat to come forward.
- Soda and molassesThe soda is mainly there to neutralise the acid in the molasses and the sour sponge; the yeast in the sponge does most of the leavening, though the soda-acid reaction contributes some gas. A small teaspoonful means a scant one, level; excess soda leaves a soapy taste and a grey crumb. Dissolve it in a spoonful of the warm water before adding.
- Graham flourGraham flour is coarsely ground whole wheat with the bran and germ left in. Modern stone-ground whole wheat is the closest match; ordinary fine whole wheat flour works but gives a less nubbly crumb. Buy it fresh, as the germ goes rancid within a few months.
- "Stiff enough to stir with a spoon""Enough graham flour to stir with a spoon, pretty stiff" -- This is a batter bread, not a kneaded one. Aim for something like very thick porridge that holds a ridge for a second or two, then relaxes. That will likely take somewhere around 5 to 7 cups of graham flour, but add it by feel, since whole wheat absorbs water unevenly.
- The riseGrease two 8x4-inch loaf pans and fill them about two-thirds. Let the batter rise until it has crested just above the rim, about 1 to 1 1/2 hours in a warm room. Batter breads collapse if pushed past that point, since there is no developed gluten network to hold them.
- Moderate oven350F. Bake 45 to 55 minutes; the loaves are done at an internal temperature of 200 to 205F, and the molasses crust will darken well before the centre is set, so trust the thermometer rather than the colour.
- Yield and keepingTwo medium loaves. Cool completely before slicing, or the moist crumb will smear on the knife. It keeps better than a white loaf and is at its best toasted on the second and third days.
Graham flour and graham bread take their name from Sylvester Graham, the Presbyterian preacher and dietary reformer of the 1830s who campaigned against white bolted flour, arguing that bread should be made at home from coarsely ground whole wheat. Graham bread later became a familiar breakfast staple, sold by bakers and made in ordinary kitchens. The method here also suggests how bread may have been organised in a household that baked continually: a sponge was kept going and drawn on for whatever was needed, so a second loaf cost only the time to stir in flour and molasses. The molasses does double duty, sweetening a coarse flour that many found dry and feeding the yeast, while the soda takes the edge off the sourness that an overnight sponge inevitably develops.