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Boston Brown Bread (Cup of Graham flour teaspoon)
1 cup of Graham flour 1 teaspoon of salt 3 1/2 cup of molasses 1¾ cups of milk 1½ cups of sifted flour 4 level teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder 1 cup of Indian meal Measure the meal and flour after sifting. Add salt and baking powder and sift three times. Add molasses and milk. Turn into a well buttered steamer and steam 3/4 hours. The water must boil constantly during the cooking.
A steamed brown bread from a baking-powder company's promotional booklet, which explains both the Calumet in the ingredient list and the slightly garbled typesetting. The list as printed carries a stray "1 cup of milk" at the end; the 1 3/4 cups called for in the body of the recipe is the working figure.
- Indian mealThis is plain cornmeal, yellow or white. Fine or medium grind gives the smoothest crumb; coarse stone-ground meal makes a grittier loaf that some prefer.
- Graham flourA coarse whole-wheat flour with the bran left in, named for Sylvester Graham. Ordinary whole-wheat flour is the closest substitute; stone-ground is closer still.
- Sifted flour"Sifted flour" means all-purpose, and the instruction to measure after sifting matters here. Sifted flour weighs appreciably less per cup than flour scooped straight from the bin, so measuring first and sifting after will make the batter stiff.
- The steaming time"3/4 hours" cannot be right as printed; no steamed brown bread of this size sets in 45 minutes. The figure is likely a mangled 3 to 4 hours (the same typesetting that produced "13/4" and "11/2" elsewhere). Three hours is enough for a mold of about a quart; test with a skewer to the center.
- Steamer and moldButter a 1- to 2-quart mold or two 1-lb coffee tins, fill no more than two-thirds, and cover tightly with buttered foil or a lid so condensation cannot drip in. Set on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water reaching halfway up the mold.
- Keeping the water boilingThe line about constant boiling is the hinge of the recipe. Baking powder gives its lift early, and a lull in the steam lets the batter cool and settle into a dense band at the bottom. Keep a kettle of boiling water beside the pot and top up as needed, never with cold water.
- Baking powderCalumet was a double-acting powder (sodium aluminium sulphate with phosphate), so any modern double-acting baking powder works at the same 4 teaspoons. Sifting three times is not fussiness; it is a practical way of distributing the leavening evenly through three different meals.
- Yield and servingAbout one large loaf, 10 to 12 slices. Turn out while warm, let stand a few minutes to firm, and cut with a taut string or a serrated knife rather than pressing down with a blade. Traditionally eaten with baked beans and butter.
Steamed brown bread belongs to a New England tradition older than chemical leavening: cornmeal and rye or whole wheat, sweetened with molasses and cooked by long, moist heat in a kettle rather than in the oven of a hearth that was already busy. The molasses came in on the same trade routes that supplied rum, and the cornmeal was the cheap native grain, which is why the loaf is dark, faintly sweet and dense. What dates this particular version is the baking powder. The older recipes rely on saleratus and sour milk, or on nothing but a long steam; four level teaspoons of a branded powder places it firmly in the era of the company recipe booklet, when manufacturers like Calumet distributed collections of "reliable" recipes to teach cooks to buy leavening by the can. The pairing with Saturday baked beans is the standard tradition, the bean pot and the bread kettle sharing the same slow morning.