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Quick Graham Bread
One and a half pints sour milk, half cup New Orleans molasses, a little salt, two tea-spoons soda dissolved in a little hot water, and as much Graham flour as can be stirred in with a spoon; pour in well-greased pan, put in oven as soon as mixed, and bake two hours. Mrs. E. J. W.
A soda-raised loaf of the plainest kind: no yeast, no rising time, and no second chance once the soda hits the sour milk. Everything here follows from that.
- Into the oven at onceThe soda begins reacting with the acid in the milk the moment it is stirred in, and this batter has no gluten structure to trap gas for long. Have the pan greased and the oven up to heat before you mix; any delay costs you the rise.
- Sour milk means buttermilkNineteenth-century sour milk was raw milk clabbered at room temperature. Cultured buttermilk is the direct substitute; plain kefir or milk soured with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice per cup also works, though the latter is thinner and gives a slightly slacker batter.
- One and a half pintsThree cups, or about 700 ml. This is a large quantity for a single loaf, which is why the baking time runs so long.
- New Orleans molassesA light or medium unsulphured cane molasses, full-flavoured but not bitter. Blackstrap is a different product and will dominate the loaf; British treacle is the nearest equivalent to hand but darker and stronger in taste.
- Graham flourStone-ground whole wheat, coarser than most modern whole-wheat flour and with the bran left in. Coarse or "graham" whole wheat from a mill is the nearest thing; ordinary whole-wheat flour gives a finer, denser crumb. Expect somewhere around 4 to 5 cups, but go by the described consistency, not a number.
- "As much as can be stirred in with a spoon"This is the only guide to texture the recipe offers, and it means a thick, sticky batter that drops heavily from the spoon rather than a kneadable dough. Stop while the spoon still moves; over-flouring turns this loaf into a brick.
- Two hours means a slow ovenThe recipe gives no temperature at all; a two-hour bake implies gentle heat, and something in the region of 300-325F is a reasonable modern guess rather than anything the book states. A standard 9x5 pan at 325F is usually done in about 75 to 90 minutes. Test with a skewer at the centre.
- Yield and keepingOne large loaf, or two smaller ones if you divide the batter and shorten the bake. Like most molasses quick breads it slices better the day after and keeps well wrapped for several days.
Graham flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the Presbyterian preacher and dietary reformer whose 1830s campaign against refined white flour made unsifted wheat meal a matter of moral as much as nutritional principle. By the time Buckeye Cookery was compiled in Minnesota in 1877, "Graham" had passed out of the reform lecture hall and into ordinary usage as simply the word for coarse whole-wheat flour, and the book carries a whole run of Graham breads, gems and puddings alongside its white loaves. The soda-and-sour-milk method here belonged to a farm kitchen with milk souring in the pantry as a matter of course and a range that held gentle heat for hours after the main cooking was done. Recipes in this collection are signed with contributors' initials, as this one is, because the book was assembled from the household books of Ohio and Midwestern women rather than written by a single author.