Home › Bread › Graham and Rye Bread
Graham and Rye Bread
2 cups graham flour 2 cups rye meal 2 cups boiling water 1 teaspoon salt 1 yeast cake dissolved in 1/3 cup luke warm water 1 tablespoon molasses 1 tablespoon shortening Put the molasses, shortening and salt in the mixing bowl, scald with the boiling water. When luke warm add the dissolved yeast cake, make a sponge with the graham; when light make stiff with the rye flour. It does not require long kneading and will be slightly sticky. Bake in greased pans one and one-quarter hours, in a moderate oven.
This is the Brown Bread of the English bakeries and needs only a brick oven to be as good as it is.
A two-stage sponge bread built on graham and rye, neither of which brings much gluten to the party. The dough will feel wrong to anyone used to white bread; that is expected.
- Resist the urge to add flourThe instruction that matters most is "it does not require long kneading and will be slightly sticky." Graham and rye form little gluten, so extra kneading and extra flour give you a dense brick rather than a better crumb. Work it just enough to bring it together and let the sponge stage do the structural work.
- The yeast cakeOne yeast cake of the period is a compressed cake of roughly 0.6 oz. Substitute one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry yeast, softened in the 1/3 cup of lukewarm water as written.
- Scalding, and why the order mattersBoiling water goes onto the molasses, shortening and salt first, not onto the flour and never onto the yeast. Let it come genuinely to lukewarm — around 100-110F — before the yeast goes in; hotter liquid will weaken or kill it.
- Graham flour and rye mealGraham flour is coarsely milled whole wheat, still sold under that name; ordinary whole-wheat flour is close enough. Rye meal is a coarse rye grind, and the recipe switches to calling it "rye flour" halfway through — treat them as the same thing here and use medium or dark rye.
- The sponge stageBeat the graham into the lukewarm liquid to make a loose batter and let it rise until visibly domed and bubbly, roughly an hour in a warm room. "When light" is the cue, not the clock. Then work in the rye, shape, and give the loaves a second rise until nearly doubled.
- Moderate oven350F. At that temperature the stated hour and a quarter suits two loaves in standard 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch pans; check for an internal temperature of 200-205F, since a dark, molasses-tinted crust is a poor guide to doneness.
- Yield and keepingFour cups of flour with roughly two and a third cups of liquid (the 2 cups boiling water plus the 1/3 cup for the yeast) makes two modest loaves or one large one. Rye breads slice badly warm — leave them at least four hours, and they improve on the second day.
Graham flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the American temperance preacher and dietary reformer of the 1830s who argued for coarse, unbolted wheat against the fashionable white flour of the day; by the time this book was printed the word had long since detached from his movement and simply meant whole wheat at the mill. Rye-and-wheat mixtures have a long northern pedigree, and molasses-sweetened dark loaves were also well established in American kitchens. The closing remark — that this is "the Brown Bread of the English bakeries" and needs only a brick oven to match it — is worth noting for what it admits: commercial bakers generally had masonry ovens with long, even heat, and the home cook with a range was understood to be making a slightly lesser version of a loaf she could buy.