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Raised Brown Bread
1 teaspoon salt teaspoon soda cup lukewarm water 2 cups boiling water Pour boiling water on corn meal. When lukewarm add dissolved yeast cake and remaining ingredients.
Beat well, let it rise over night, beat and pour into a buttered brown-bread tin. Bake in moderate oven from one and one half to two hours. 4 cups flour 1 cup milk cup sugar cup butter
A yeast-raised brown bread rather than the steamed, soda-leavened kind, built on a cornmeal scald and given a long overnight rise. Several of the quantities in the printed list have lost their fractions, so treat the proportions below as guidance rather than transcription.
- The hinge: scald the meal firstBoiling water poured over the cornmeal gelatinises the starch and softens the grit, which is what keeps the crumb from being sandy. It must cool to lukewarm before the yeast goes in, or the yeast dies.
- Missing amountsThe cornmeal quantity, the yeast, and the fractions before sugar, butter, water and soda are absent from the list as printed. Against 4 cups of flour, something like 1 cup of cornmeal gives a workable batter, but the original amount cannot be recovered from this text.
- Yeast cakeA compressed cake of roughly 0.6 oz, in the region of 2 1/4 teaspoons of modern active dry yeast, is the usual equivalence, though cake sizes of the period varied. Given the overnight rise, rather less than a full cake will do in a warm kitchen.
- Soda alongside yeastThe soda amount is lost with its fraction. Its likely job is to offset the acidity that builds over a long, slow ferment, and it will darken the crumb slightly; it may also give a little lift. Keep it small -- too much soda tastes soapy.
- Moderate ovenAround 350F. A large loaf may well need the full two hours; check for an internal temperature of about 200F rather than relying on the clock.
- Brown-bread tinA tall, narrow cylindrical mould, often with a lid. A coffee can or a 9x5 loaf pan will serve for a batter of this size, though the loaf will bake faster in the wider pan.
- Overnight riseAt modern room temperature, 8 to 10 hours is right; a warm kitchen will overproof it. If the dough smells sharply sour and has collapsed, it has gone too far.
- YieldOne large loaf, about 12 to 16 slices.
Brown bread in nineteenth-century New England usually meant the steamed loaf of rye, cornmeal and molasses that went with Saturday baked beans, leavened with saleratus and cooked for hours in a covered mould set in a kettle of water. This version departs from that pattern: raised with yeast, baked rather than steamed, sweetened with sugar instead of molasses, and enriched with milk and butter. Lowney's book was published by a Boston chocolate company, and the recipe fits the turn-of-the-century taste for lighter baking, with the cornmeal contributing texture and flavour more than bulk. The tall cylindrical brown-bread tin, sold specifically for the purpose, is a carry-over from the older steamed loaf.