Brown Bread
1 cup white flour. 1 cup meal. 1 cup buttermilk. 2 teaspoons soda. 1 cup New Orleans molasses. 1/2 teaspoon salt.
Mix well, put into well buttered molds. Add 1 cup chopped raisins and steam three and one-half hours.
A steamed loaf rather than a baked one, so the pot of simmering water matters more than the oven. A few of Mrs. Wilson's terms need translating before you start.
- Read the method backwardsThe raisins are listed after the instruction to fill the molds, but they belong in the batter. Toss the chopped raisins with a spoonful of the measured flour and stir them in before the batter goes into the molds.
- "Meal"In an American bread of this type meal means cornmeal, and a medium or fine yellow grind is right. Some New England versions use rye meal or a mix of rye and corn; either works, but the texture will be denser with rye.
- New Orleans molassesA full-flavor cane molasses, lighter than blackstrap. Blackstrap is more bitter and less acidic, so it gives the soda and buttermilk less to work with.
- SodaTwo teaspoons is a lot for one cup of buttermilk, though the acidic molasses takes up some of it. If your loaf tastes faintly soapy or shows a greenish tinge next to the raisins, cut it to one and a half teaspoons next time.
- MoldsOne-pound coffee tins, straight-sided pudding molds or well-buttered pint jars all serve. Fill them no more than two-thirds and cover the tops with buttered foil or parchment tied down, or the loaf climbs out and the condensing steam waterlogs it.
- The steaming setupStand the molds on a rack in a deep pot, add boiling water to come halfway up their sides, cover, and keep it at a bare simmer. Check the water level every hour and top up with boiling water; a pot that runs dry scorches the bottom of the loaf.
- Timing and donenessThree and a half hours suits a full-sized mold; smaller pint jars will be done appreciably sooner, so start testing them early. A skewer into the center should come out clean, and the loaf should pull slightly from the sides.
- Yield and servingRoughly two small loaves, depending on the molds; the recipe gives no yield. Turn them out while hot, then slice with a thread or a serrated knife rather than pressing down with a blade. Commonly eaten warm with baked beans, or buttered or spread with cream cheese.
Steamed brown bread is a New England habit that long outlasted its reason: the usual explanation is that in kitchens with a single small oven kept busy by the week's baking, a covered mold set in a kettle over the fire cooked bread without competing for oven space, and that the moist heat suited coarse, low-gluten meals that made heavy work of a dry bake. The classic version is often called thirded bread, from equal parts rye meal, cornmeal and wheat flour; Mrs. Wilson's is a simpler two-grain version leavened entirely with soda against buttermilk and molasses rather than yeast. Molasses is doing double duty here as sweetener and as acid, and the call for New Orleans molasses specifically reflects a period when American cooks distinguished sharply between cane syrups by origin and grade. The recipe's terseness is characteristic of Mrs. Wilson: assumed knowledge, no yield, no pot described.