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Baked Brown Bread
4 cups sifted Graham flour 1 cup bread flour 2 level teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder 1/2 teaspoon of soda 1 egg 1/2 cup of brown sugar 1/2 cup of molasses 2 cups sour milk 2 tablespoons sour cream Sift flour once, then measure, add baking powder and soda, and sift three times. Rub sugar and molasses until smooth, then add milk, cream, and well beaten egg, then add flour and pour into a well greased pan, let stand for two hours, then bake in moderate oven 1 hour. This makes one large or two small loaves.
A promotional-booklet quick bread, closer to a molasses loaf cake than to yeast bread. Two things decide the outcome: how you handle the two-hour rest, and how you measure flour that has been sifted first.
- The two-hour restThe soda reacts with the sour milk as soon as they meet, so some lift is lost over a long stand; Calumet, however, was double-acting, and part of its gas is released by oven heat. If you want a taller loaf, bake at once; if you follow the rest as written, expect a dense, moist, close-crumbed loaf.
- Graham flourCoarsely ground whole wheat, named for Sylvester Graham rather than for any modern graham cracker. Stone-ground whole wheat flour is the closest match; regular whole wheat works but gives a smoother crumb.
- Measuring"Sift flour once, then measure" matters. Sifted-then-spooned flour runs about 110-120 g per cup, so 4 cups Graham plus 1 cup bread flour is roughly 550-600 g total. Scooping unsifted flour straight from the bag will add 15 percent or more and dry the loaf out.
- Sour milk and sour creamSour milk here means milk soured naturally, as was routine before refrigeration, and acidic enough to react with the soda. Use buttermilk, or stir 2 tablespoons lemon juice or white vinegar into 2 cups whole milk and let it stand ten minutes. The 2 tablespoons of sour cream is for richness; ordinary cultured sour cream is fine.
- Calumet Baking PowderCalumet was a double-acting phosphate-and-alum powder, and this book was published to sell it. Any modern double-acting baking powder substitutes measure for measure.
- Moderate oven350F. A loaf this wet and this heavy on molasses browns fast, so tent the top with foil if it darkens before the middle sets.
- Pan and donenessOne 9x5-inch loaf pan, or two 8x4-inch pans, greased well. An hour is right for the large loaf; small loaves are usually done in 40-50 minutes. Look for 200-205F at the center, or a skewer that comes out clean.
- ServingThe large loaf gives about 12-14 slices. It cuts far better fully cooled, and better still the next day; traditionally served with butter, or with cream cheese and baked beans.
Reliable Recipes was one of the pamphlet cookbooks issued by the Calumet Baking Powder Company of Chicago in the early twentieth century, which is why the brand name is written into the ingredient list rather than the generic "baking powder." The dish itself is the oven-baked descendant of New England brown bread, which was normally steamed for hours in a covered mould or a coffee can and paired with Saturday baked beans; chemical leavening let a household bake it dry in a loaf pan in an hour instead. The Graham flour points to another nineteenth-century current: Sylvester Graham's campaign for unsifted whole-meal flour in the 1830s made his name a generic term for coarse wheat flour long after his dietary reform movement had faded. Sour milk as a leavening acid is a mark of the pre-refrigeration kitchen, where milk on the turn was a resource rather than a loss.