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Graham and Rye Bread
One pint graham, one pint rye meal, one tablespoon molasses, one of shortening, one teaspoon salt, one-half ounce compressed yeast dissolved in two and one-third cups water. Make a sponge with the graham, and when light make stiff with the rye; it does not require long kneading and will always be slightly sticky. not put more than one and one-half pounds in a loaf. Bake one hour and a quarter in a moderate oven.
Do
— Mrs. I. R. Fitchett
A plain two-stage sponge loaf of the kind that turned up in every church and grange cookbook of the period. The text has been scrambled slightly in printing — the stray "Do" at the end belongs in front of "not put more than one and one-half pounds in a loaf."
- The hinge: keep it stickyRye and graham have little gluten between them, and the instruction not to knead long or to correct the tackiness is the whole method. Adding flour until the dough handles like white bread dough gives a dense, dry brick.
- A pint is a measure of volumeFlour was scooped by the pint cup, so one pint of each meal is two cups, about 4 cups total, roughly 500 g. The 2 1/3 cups of water makes a very wet dough by modern standards — that is intentional.
- Graham and rye mealGraham flour is coarsely ground whole wheat, still sold under that name; ordinary stone-ground whole wheat is the closest substitute. Rye meal here means coarse or medium rye flour, not the fine light rye sold for delis.
- Compressed yeastHalf an ounce of fresh cake yeast is about 14 g, equal to roughly 1 1/2 teaspoons of instant dry yeast or a scant packet of active dry. Fresh yeast is still available at some bakeries and supermarkets but keeps only a week or two.
- ShorteningIn a kitchen of this period this meant lard or butter, occasionally a vegetable shortening. A tablespoon of any soft fat does the job; it is there for keeping quality more than flavour.
- The sponge stageThe recipe specifies only a graham sponge stiffened with rye, and does not say at which stage the molasses, salt and shortening go in or how long anything rises. Beating them into the graham batter, letting it rise until domed and bubbling, then working in the rye and proving the shaped loaves, is a reasonable reconstruction rather than the text's instruction.
- Moderate oven350F. An hour and a quarter is right for a 1 1/2 lb loaf of this density; check the centre reads 200-205F rather than relying on the clock alone.
- YieldThe quantities come to roughly 2 1/4 to 2 1/2 lb of dough in total, so one loaf at the 1 1/2 lb limit the recipe sets plus a smaller one, or two modest loaves. The recipe gives the limit without saying why.
Graham flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the Presbyterian minister and dietary reformer whose 1830s campaign against fine white flour made coarse whole-wheat meal a moral as much as a culinary choice; by the time this book was compiled the name had long outlived the movement and simply meant unbolted wheat at the grocer's. Rye was a common companion grain in the north-eastern states, growing reliably on thin upland soil where wheat sulked, and the molasses is the same sweetener that darkens the region's brown breads and baked beans. The compressed yeast points to a later rather than an earlier date: cake yeast sold by the half-ounce spread through country stores in the closing decades of the nineteenth century and displaced the homemade hop or potato ferments that older cookbooks assume, which is why Mrs. Fitchett can give a rising method in one line rather than a page.