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Rye Muffins II
1 1/4 cups rye meal 1 1/4 cups flour 4 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup molasses 1 1/4 cups milk 1 egg 1 tablespoon melted butter Mix and bake as Graham Muffins II, adding molasses with milk.
A quick, molasses-sweetened muffin that leans on baking powder rather than yeast. The method is borrowed from another recipe in the same chapter, so the whole procedure has to be reconstructed: dry ingredients sifted together, liquids combined separately, then the two folded together briefly.
- The hinge: mix as little as possibleRye has little gluten but the wheat flour has plenty. Stir only until the dry streaks disappear, then get the pans into the oven while the baking powder is still active.
- Rye meal is not rye flourRye meal is coarsely ground whole rye, closer to a medium or pumpernickel grind than to the fine light rye sold for bread. Medium rye flour works; fine white rye gives a paler, softer muffin with less of the intended bite.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives none, the method being borrowed from Graham Muffins II. A modern 400-425F works: twenty to twenty-five minutes in greased tins, until a skewer comes out clean.
- Baking powder quantityFour teaspoons to 2 1/2 cups of dry ingredients is heavy by modern standards. Three teaspoons of modern double-acting powder gives ample lift.
- MolassesUse unsulphured light or dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and will dominate the rye. Warm the measuring cup or oil it so the molasses slides out.
- MilkWhole milk. The instruction to add the molasses with the milk matters: combining them first disperses the syrup evenly, which you cannot do once the flour is in.
- YieldAbout twelve standard muffins. Best warm on the day they are baked.
Rye was the everyday bread grain of northern Europe and of colonial New England, where "rye and Injun" loaves of rye meal and cornmeal fed households that could not spare wheat. By the time cookery-school books like this one were written, wheat flour was cheap and rye had shifted from necessity to flavour, appearing in small quick breads paired with molasses in the older New England manner. The presence of two numbered rye muffin recipes, and of Graham muffins alongside them, reflects the turn-of-the-century interest in whole grains promoted by dietary reformers who argued that refined white flour had stripped bread of its nourishment.