Date Bread
Add one cup chopped dates to Graham or entire Wheat Bread.
Walnut or Filbert Bread Add two cups chopped nuts to Graham or Entire Wheat Bread, just before putting into pans. 2 cups corn meal 1/4 yeast cake 2 cups rye cup molasses
This is a variation note rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you already have the book's Graham or Entire Wheat Bread dough in hand. The stray lines at the end belong to a different formula altogether.
- The text is a fragmentThe last three lines — corn meal, yeast cake, rye, molasses — appear to be the opening of a separate recipe, most likely a rye-and-Indian loaf, that has run into this entry, and at least one quantity has dropped out (the molasses has no measure). Ignore them when making date bread.
- Entire wheat and Graham"Entire wheat" is whole wheat flour, milled from the whole kernel. Graham flour is a coarser whole-wheat grind, traditionally with the bran left in visible flakes; ordinary stone-ground whole wheat is the nearest current equivalent.
- Yeast cakeA quarter of a compressed yeast cake is a small amount by modern reckoning; compressed cakes of this era are usually reckoned at around 0.6 oz, though sizes varied by maker. Cake yeast quantities in old books generally assume a long, slow rise of many hours, so do not scale them against a quick modern instant-yeast schedule.
- FilbertsFilberts are hazelnuts. Toast and rub off the papery skins before chopping, or they will make the crumb bitter.
- When to addThe recipe says to fold the nuts in just before panning, and dates want the same treatment. Adding them earlier means they get torn and smeared through several rounds of kneading, and the dates in particular will streak the crumb.
- Handling the datesModern pitted dates are softer and wetter than the pressed dates of 1907. Chop them and toss with a spoonful of the flour so the pieces separate rather than clumping into a single sticky mass in the dough.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven instruction. A whole-wheat loaf of this sort is generally baked at about 375F in a modern oven. Dates and molasses-rich doughs brown early, so tent the top with foil if it colours before the centre is set — a loaf is usually done at an internal temperature of around 195-200F.
Lowney's was a chocolate company, and its cook book was published to sell chocolate, but it carried a full complement of household recipes to earn its place on the kitchen shelf. Graham and "entire wheat" breads appear in it because whole-grain baking had been a fixture of American reform cookery since the 1830s, when Sylvester Graham preached coarse unbolted flour against the fine white flour of commercial bakers; by 1900 the moral fervour had faded and Graham flour was simply another ingredient. Dates and nuts were the natural enrichment for such loaves, having become cheap and widely available in American groceries by the turn of the century. The habit of listing a dish as an add-one-cup variation on an established dough, rather than writing it out in full, is characteristic of these compact promotional books.