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Health Bread
Hannah Meyer. 2 cups sour milk 2 cups bran 2 cups flour 1 cup brown sugar 1 cup raisins 1 small molasses 3 eggs 1 T salt 1 C sugar can 1 small can Brere Rabbit 4 C milk 6 C Pillsbury bran 7 C white flour 8 t baking powder Add raisins, figs or nuts to your liking. Will make four loaves.
This entry appears to be two versions of the same bran loaf run together — a small batch and a larger four-loaf batch — with no oven temperature, no baking time, and no method at all. Read the second list as the working recipe and treat the first as a note.
- Two recipes, one paragraphThe entry reads as a small batch followed by a larger four-loaf batch, though where one ends and the other begins is not marked: 2 cups sour milk, 2 cups bran, 2 cups flour, 1 cup brown sugar and 1 cup raisins look like the small loaf, and '1 small molasses' could belong to either list. Mixing the two together will not work, and on this reading the first list carries no leavening.
- "1 C sugar can"This is genuinely ambiguous. It most likely means one cup of sugar plus a can of something, or is a mis-set duplicate of the molasses line. Do not guess your way past it: one cup of sugar alongside the can of molasses is a reasonable reading for four loaves.
- Brer RabbitA cane molasses brand, still sold. The recipe does not say what a "small can" held, and no single period size can be assumed. Green Label is mild, Full Flavor is darker and more assertive; either suits a bran loaf.
- BranPillsbury's bran is generally understood to have been a loose milled wheat bran rather than a ready-to-eat cereal. Use plain unprocessed wheat bran. If you substitute a bran flake cereal you are adding sugar and salt and should reduce both.
- Sour milkIn the first list, sour milk means soured or clabbered milk; buttermilk is the standard modern stand-in. The four-loaf version says only "milk", with no indication of sweet or sour, and carries baking powder as its leavening.
- Salt1 tablespoon across four loaves works out to about 3/4 teaspoon a loaf, in line with ordinary quick-bread practice.
- MethodTreat it as a quick bread: whisk the eggs, milk and molasses together, combine the dry ingredients separately, then fold the two together until just moistened. Overworking a bran batter gives a tough, tunnelled crumb.
- Oven and timeNo temperature is given, and the recipe uses no oven term at all. 350F is a reasonable modern choice for a molasses loaf, which browns fast. Four loaves in standard 9x5 pans will likely need roughly 45 to 60 minutes; test with a skewer in the centre.
- YieldFour loaves, as stated.
Bran breads sweetened with molasses ran through American church and club cookbooks from the 1890s onward, riding two currents at once: the health-reform enthusiasm for coarse, unbolted grain that traced back to Sylvester Graham, and the arrival of cheap milled bran as a by-product of roller-milled white flour. That is why this loaf names its brands om Pillsbury bran and Brer Rabbit molasses were pantry staples a contributor could assume everyone had, and naming them was a shorthand as useful as a measurement. The doubled, half-punctuated state of Hannah Meyer's entry is itself typical of the genre: these books were assembled from handwritten cards by volunteers working fast.