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Brown Bread (C Graham flour C white flour t)
2 C Graham flour 2 C white flour 2 t soda 1 t salt 1/2 C molasses 2 C sour milk Mix well graham flour, white flour, soda and salt. Add molasses and sour milk, mix thoroughly. Pour into well greased tins and bake 40 minutes in a moderate oven. This makes two loaves.
Louise Wehrenberg
A quick bread of the plainest kind: no eggs, no fat, no sugar beyond the molasses, and no rising time. The whole thing depends on the reaction between soda and genuinely sour milk, so that is where the attention goes.
- Sour milk is not spoiled milkThe original assumes raw milk left to clabber, which pasteurized milk will not do safely. Use buttermilk, or stir 2 tablespoons of lemon juice or white vinegar into 2 cups of whole milk and let it stand 10 minutes.
- AbbreviationsC is cup, t is teaspoon. So: 2 cups Graham flour, 2 cups white flour, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 cup molasses, 2 cups sour milk.
- Graham flourCoarse whole-wheat flour, stone-ground with the bran and germ left in. Modern whole-wheat flour is the closest match; stone-ground whole wheat is closer still. It absorbs more liquid than white flour, so the batter will thicken as it stands.
- A moderate ovenConventionally understood as somewhere around 350 to 375F. Bake on a middle rack.
- Soda and molassesTwo teaspoons of soda for four cups of flour is the usual quick-bread proportion, and it relies on the acidity of the soured milk. Use unsulphured dark molasses rather than blackstrap; honey or maple syrup will change the flavour and colour of the loaf entirely.
- Work quicklyThe soda begins reacting the moment the sour milk goes in. Mix just until no dry flour remains, get it into the pans, and get the pans into a preheated oven.
- Pans and timingTwo 8x4-inch loaf pans. Forty minutes at 350F is on the short side for loaves this wet; start testing at 40 minutes and expect 45 to 55, until a skewer comes out clean and the internal temperature reads about 200F.
- Serving and keepingTurn out onto a rack and cool completely before slicing, or the crumb will smear. It is a dense, faintly bitter loaf meant for butter, baked beans or cheese, and it keeps three or four days wrapped.
Brown bread in American cookery covers a wide family of dark, molasses-sweetened loaves, from the steamed Boston brown bread of rye and cornmeal to oven-baked versions like this one built on Graham flour. The flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the 1830s temperance and dietary reformer who preached unsifted whole-wheat as a moral as well as physical corrective; by the time this book was compiled his name had long outlived his movement and simply meant coarse whole-wheat on a sack. A recipe of this kind suited a kitchen with sour milk on hand and no time for a yeast rising, being cheap, fast, forgiving, and yielding two loaves at once. The recipe is credited to Louise Wehrenberg, the usual practice in community collections of this sort.