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Oatmeal Brown Bread
1 cup Graham flour. 1 pint Quaker oats. 3/4 cup corn meal. 3/4 cup molasses. 2 teaspoons salt. 1 pint sour milk.
Mix all well, steam 2 hours in greased molds, half hour in timbal cups.
A steamed brown bread of the Boston type, leaned toward oats rather than rye. The list is spare and one thing appears to be missing, so read the first point before you start.
- The missing sodaSour milk and molasses are both acidic, and comparable brown breads usually pair them with saleratus (baking soda) to raise the loaf. None is listed here, which may well be an omission in setting the type. Without it the result is likely to be a dense, damp pudding-loaf rather than bread; about 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons of baking soda, sifted with the dry ingredients, is a common proportion for this quantity.
- Sour milkThis means naturally soured raw milk, thick and clabbered. Modern pasteurised milk spoils rather than sours cleanly. Buttermilk is the direct substitute, cup for cup; failing that, a pint of milk with two tablespoons of lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left ten minutes.
- Quaker oatsRolled oats, and at this date that meant what we would call old-fashioned rolled oats, not the quick-cooking or instant kinds. A pint is 2 cups, roughly 6 ounces by weight.
- Graham flourCoarse whole-wheat flour, milled with the bran and germ left in. Stone-ground whole wheat is the closest thing on a shelf today; all-purpose whole wheat will work but gives a smoother crumb.
- MolassesUse unsulphured dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and can dominate the oats. Warm the measuring cup and the molasses slides out clean.
- Molds and how full to fillThe traditional vessel is a tall cylindrical tin with a lid, and the emptied 1-lb coffee can was the household stand-in. Grease well, fill no more than two-thirds, and cover tightly with a lid or with buttered foil tied down, or condensation will waterlog the top.
- Steaming setupStand the molds on a rack in a deep pot, add boiling water to come halfway up the sides, cover, and keep the water at a bare simmer for the full two hours. Check the level once an hour and top up with boiling water.
- Timbal cupsSmall individual metal molds, roughly the size of a large muffin cup. The half-hour given for these is right; test with a skewer, which should come out clean and slightly moist rather than wet.
- Yield and servingEnough to fill two or three 1-lb molds two-thirds full, or a dozen or so small ones. Turn out while warm, and if the crust is soft set the unmolded loaves in a low oven for ten minutes to dry the surface. Traditionally sliced with a string rather than a knife and eaten with butter, or with baked beans.
Steamed brown bread belongs to the New England tradition of cooking without an oven: molasses, a coarse meal and a leavening acid, sealed in a tin and set over water on the range, which is often said to be how the dish came to be paired with Saturday baked beans. The classic proportion is thirds of rye, cornmeal and wheat, and versions of it are generally traced to the colonial reliance on cornmeal when wheat was scarce and costly. Mrs. Wilson's substitution of rolled oats for the rye is of its moment. She wrote her columns and books around the First World War and its aftermath, when wheat conservation was a public campaign and oats were widely suggested as an extender in breads and puddings; naming the brand in the ingredient list, as she does here, appears to have been unremarkable in newspaper cookery of the period.