Graham Bread
Two eggs Two cups of sour milk Two teaspoons of Larkin Soda One-half teaspoon of Larkin Table Salt Two-thirds of a cup of molasses One cup of wheat flour Three cups of Graham flour This makes two loaves. Bake in a moderate oven for an hour.
A soda-risen batter bread rather than a yeast loaf, so it goes straight from bowl to pan to oven with no rising time. The batter is loose and pourable, and that is correct.
- Graham flourGraham flour is whole wheat milled coarse, with the bran and germ returned. Modern stone-ground whole wheat is the closest match; ordinary fine whole-wheat flour works but gives a softer crumb.
- Sour milkThis means naturally soured raw milk, which the soda needs as its acid. Use cultured buttermilk cup for cup. Pasteurised milk left out does not sour usefully, it spoils; if you have only sweet milk, add a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar per cup and let it stand ten minutes.
- Larkin Soda and Larkin Table SaltHouse-brand products of the sponsoring company. Substitute plain baking soda and fine table salt in the same amounts.
- Two teaspoons of sodaThat is a full measure, but it is in range for two cups of sour milk plus two-thirds cup of molasses, both acidic. Sift or whisk it thoroughly through the flours before the liquids go in, or you will get bitter yellow streaks.
- Moderate ovenThe recipe gives no temperature; 'moderate' is conventionally reckoned at about 350-375F. Divide between two greased loaf pans of about 8 by 4 inches, filling each no more than two-thirds.
- DonenessAn hour is about right in a moderate oven, but molasses batters brown early and can look done before the centre is set. Test with a skewer, or take it to 200-205F internal.
- No fat in the doughThere is no butter or shortening here, which makes a lean, close, faintly sticky crumb that stales fast. It is best the day it is baked, and very good toasted after that.
- YieldTwo small loaves, as the recipe states. Often eaten with butter at a plain supper.
Graham bread takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the Connecticut-born temperance preacher and diet reformer of the 1830s who lectured chiefly in Philadelphia, New York and Boston, and who argued that white flour stripped bread of what the body needed and that families should bake at home with coarse, unsifted wheat meal. His name outlived his arguments, attaching itself to a flour, a cracker and this kind of dark loaf, and by the time this book was printed "Graham bread" simply meant brown bread made with whole meal, molasses and no particular ideology. The branded soda and salt in the ingredient list mark the recipe's other lineage: cookbooks issued or sponsored by manufacturers, distributed cheaply or given away, in which each measurement quietly names the product the reader was meant to buy. The soda-and-sour-milk method itself belongs to a practical shift away from yeast, letting a cook put a loaf in the oven within minutes of deciding to make one.