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Graham or Whole-Wheat Bread
1 cake FLEISCHMANN'S YEAST 1 cup milk, scalded and cooled 4 tablespoonfuls light brown sugar or molasses 1 cup lukewarm water 2 tablespoonfuls lard or butter, melted 4 cups Graham flour 1 cup sifted white flour 1 teaspoonful salt THIS recipe gives Bread of an excellent flayor and richness, which may well be served occasionally to give variety to the diet. Both Graham and entire wheat are highly valuable in the dietary since they stimulate the process of digestion and give the digestive tract needed exercise. Dissolve yeast and sugar, or molasses, in lukewarm liquid. Add lard or butter, then flour gradually, or enough to make a dough that can be handled, and the salt. Knead thoroughly, or "throw and roll" as shown on page 15, being sure to keep dough soft. Cover and set aside in a warm place to rise for about two hours.
When double in bulk, turn out on kneading board, mould into loaves, and place in well-greased pans, cover and set to rise again--about one hour, or until light. Bake one hour, in a slower oven than for white Bread.
Two names for much the same loaf, and two things to get right: what Graham flour actually is, and the instruction to keep the dough soft, which the recipe means literally.
- Graham flourGraham flour is wheat ground coarse with the bran and germ left in or returned to it, rather than sifted out. It is still sold under that name in the United States; elsewhere, coarse or stone-ground whole wheat is the same thing. The name belongs to Sylvester Graham, the nineteenth-century American reformer who preached against white flour.
- Err wetThe recipe insists on keeping the dough soft and means it. Whole-grain flour takes up water slowly, so a dough that feels correct at the end of kneading will be noticeably stiffer twenty minutes later. Hold back some of the white flour rather than adding all of it on schedule.
- A page the site does not showThe instruction to throw and roll refers to an illustration on page 15 of the original booklet. Whatever it depicted, an ordinary thorough hand knead, or eight to ten minutes in a mixer with a dough hook, develops this dough as well as it can be developed. It will stay tackier than a white dough all the way through, which is normal and not a reason to flour it.
- Two hours, or whatever it takesThe first rise is given two hours and the second about one. Those are realistic for a dough this heavy, but volume is the measure, not the clock: the first rise wants doubling, the second only until the loaves look light and the dough no longer springs straight back.
- A slower ovenThe recipe says only to use a slower oven than for white bread, assuming the reader has the booklet’s white loaf to hand. About 350°F (175°C) is the sense of it. The brown sugar or molasses browns the crust long before the centre is set, which is exactly why the heat comes down while the hour stays long.
- Tell when it is doneAn hour is a long bake for loaves this size and the crust will lie about it. Turn a loaf out of the tin and take its temperature: 195°F to 200°F (90°C to 93°C) in the centre means baked through.
The claim attached to this recipe is worth reading twice. Graham and entire wheat, the booklet says, stimulate digestion and give the digestive tract needed exercise. That is not an argument about nourishment at all; it is an argument about work, the then-current idea that the gut benefited from having something to push against. The line of thinking runs back to Sylvester Graham, a Presbyterian minister and temperance lecturer who preached against bolted white flour with the same fervour he brought to drink and to appetite generally, and whose name outlived his programme twice over: on a bag of coarse wheat flour, and on the graham cracker. By the time a yeast company was printing recipes, nobody buying graham flour was signing on to Graham’s views about diet or self-restraint. The flour had become what the headnote says it is, something to serve occasionally to give variety to the diet.