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Steamed Graham Bread
3 cups graham flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 cup molasses 1 cup white flour 3 teaspoons soda 2½ cups sour milk Mix and cook the same as Boston Brown Bread, using one radiator.
A fireless-cooker version of a steamed brown bread, written for a reader who already had the Boston Brown Bread recipe and a fireless cooker on hand. Both of those assumptions need unpacking.
- "One radiator"A fireless cooker was an insulated box; the heat came from soapstone or cast-iron discs (radiators) heated red-hot on the range and dropped in beneath the pot. One radiator means moderate, falling heat over several hours. Without that equipment, the batter is steamed the ordinary way: covered moulds set on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water reaching halfway up their sides, gently simmering for about 3 hours.
- Graham flourCoarse whole-wheat flour milled with the bran and germ returned, named for Sylvester Graham. Modern stone-ground whole wheat is the closest match; standard whole-wheat flour works but gives a finer, denser crumb.
- Sour milkMilk that had clabbered naturally, thick and acidic. Pasteurised milk left out spoils rather than sours, so use buttermilk, or 2½ cups milk with 2½ tablespoons lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left 10 minutes.
- Three teaspoons sodaHeavy by modern standards, but the acid load here is real: 2½ cups sour milk plus a cup of molasses. Even so, 2 teaspoons gives a cleaner flavour; the full three can leave a soapy edge and darken the loaf. Mix quickly and get it into the moulds, since the reaction starts immediately.
- MolassesUnsulphured dark molasses rather than blackstrap, which is markedly more bitter. This is the only sweetener, and it also supplies the colour.
- MouldsOne-pound coffee tins were a common vessel for steamed breads of this kind. Grease them well, fill no more than two-thirds, and cover tightly with foil or a tied cloth so condensed steam does not drip onto the batter.
- FinishingSteamed loaves come out damp on the surface. Uncover and set them in a 300F oven for 10 to 15 minutes to dry the crust before turning out.
- YieldAbout two to three 1-lb loaves, depending on tin size. Slice with a taut string or a serrated knife rather than a chef's knife, which compresses the crumb.
Steamed brown breads were New England kitchen economy: no oven fire needed, no wheat flour beyond a cup for structure, and a batter leavened entirely by soda meeting sour milk and molasses. Placing one in the fireless-cookery chapter puts it at a particular moment in American domestic life, roughly the 1900s through the 1920s, when insulated cookers were promoted as a fuel-saving, labour-saving successor to the coal range, and long slow dishes like this were exactly what they suited. Graham flour carries its own history, being generally traced to Sylvester Graham's 1830s campaign for unbolted whole-grain flour against the refined white loaf; by Mrs. Fryer's day the name had long outlived the reform movement and simply meant coarse whole wheat on a grocer's shelf. The instruction to "cook the same as Boston Brown Bread" assumes a cook who already knows that method.