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Wheat Muffins
Mix one pint milk, two eggs, three table-spoons yeast, and saltspoon of salt, with flour enough to make a stiff batter; let rise four or five hours and bake in muffin-rings in a hot oven, for about ten minutes. This recipe may be made with Graham flour, by adding two table-spoons of molasses, and is excellent. - Mrs. G. W. Marchant.
A yeast-raised muffin batter, not a baking-powder one, so the whole character of the recipe depends on the long rise. Two adjustments matter most: the yeast and the rings.
- The yeastThree tablespoons means liquid yeast — homemade or brewer's yeast, a pourable ferment kept in a jug. Substitute about 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons instant, or 1 packet (2 1/4 tsp) active dry yeast, and add a little extra milk to make up the lost liquid.
- Rising timeFour or five hours suits a weak wild ferment in a cool kitchen. With modern commercial yeast the batter will be domed and bubbling in 1 1/2 to 2 hours at room temperature; longer only if you cut the yeast back further or use the refrigerator overnight.
- A hot ovenThe book gives no temperature; 'hot oven' is usually read today as roughly 400–450F. Get it fully preheated, with the rings and pan heating in it, so the batter sets on contact and springs.
- Muffin-ringsMetal rings set on a greased griddle or heavy baking sheet, filled about two-thirds. English muffin rings or 3-inch crumpet rings work; a standard muffin tin will also do, though the shape is taller and the crust softer.
- ProportionsA pint of milk is 2 cups; the flour is undefined but a "stiff batter" here means thick and dropping, not pourable — roughly 3 1/2 to 4 cups. Add it gradually and stop while a spoon still moves through it.
- SaltspoonAbout 1/4 teaspoon. That is light for this much flour; 3/4 to 1 teaspoon is closer to modern taste.
- The Graham versionGraham flour is coarse whole wheat. The two tablespoons of molasses are not only for sweetness — they soften the bran-heavy crumb and feed the yeast. Expect a slower, less dramatic rise.
- YieldFifteen to eighteen 3-inch muffins, depending on how full the rings are filled. Best split and eaten hot; yeast batters like this, with little fat and no sugar, stale quickly.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877, from Marysville, Ohio) shows the older way of leavening still in working order: a wet yeast, a batter left to rise most of an afternoon, and shallow rings on a griddle rather than a deep tin. The alternative given here — Graham flour with molasses — nods to the dietary reform movement associated with Sylvester Graham, the Presbyterian preacher whose advocacy of coarse unsifted wheat flour in the 1830s gave the flour its name; by the 1870s "Graham" had settled into ordinary domestic use as a wholesome everyday option rather than a crusade. The attribution to Mrs. G. W. Marchant is typical of the book, which was assembled from contributions by named local women, so the page records not one cook's method but a community's collected practice.