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Calumet Bread
4 cups flour. 1 1/2 teaspoons salt. 1 1/2 level teaspoons lard. 6 level teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder 2 cups of milk Sift baking powder, flour and salt together. Add milk and melted fat and mix. Work into loaves, pan and bake in hot oven 30 minutes. Graham flour may be used instead of white flour.
This is a promotional recipe from a baking powder company's booklet, and it has been trimmed to the bone — the ingredient list survives only in part. Read it as a ratio sketch rather than a set of instructions.
- The list is incompleteFlour, salt and fat all appear in the method but not in the quantities given. Only the baking powder (6 level teaspoons) and the milk (2 cups) are specified, so any attempt at this loaf involves reconstructing the rest.
- Working from the liquidA ratio of about two parts flour to one part milk by volume is a common one for quick breads, which would put this at roughly 4 cups of flour, with a teaspoon of salt and a quarter cup of melted lard or butter. That is an inference, not something the text supports.
- That is a great deal of leaveningSix teaspoons of baking powder to an estimated 4 cups of flour is about 1.5 teaspoons per cup, above the modern working range of 1 to 1.25 teaspoons per cup. Too much gives a soapy, metallic aftertaste and a loaf that rises fast and collapses.
- Hot oven"Hot" in period usage is usually given as somewhere around 400-450F. For a loaf rather than biscuits, 425F for the stated 30 minutes is the sensible end of that range; check for a clean skewer and a hollow sound when tapped.
- Graham flourThe substitution named in the last line is coarse whole-wheat flour, stone-ground with the bran left in. Modern whole-wheat flour is the nearest thing; it absorbs more liquid, so the dough will be stiffer at the same milk quantity.
- "Work into loaves"This is not a batter poured into a tin but a soft dough shaped by hand, closer to a large scone or a soda bread. Handle it briefly — the leavening is chemical and begins working the moment the milk goes in, so the loaves should reach the oven quickly.
- Melted fatIn 1900s home baking this often meant lard, sometimes drippings or butter. Any of the three works; butter gives the most familiar flavour to a modern palate.
- YieldThe reconstructed quantities make two small loaves or one large one, best eaten the day it is baked. Chemically leavened breads stale quickly and dry out by the second day.
Reliable Recipes was published by the Calumet Baking Powder Company of Chicago, founded in the late 1880s, and belongs to a whole genre of turn-of-the-century booklets given away with the product to teach cooks to depend on it. That commercial purpose explains both the shape of this page and its odd gaps: the branded ingredient is named first, in exact measure, while flour and salt are left to the reader's judgment. Chemical leavening had by then largely displaced the older routine of saleratus plus sour milk, and baking powder companies competed hard on formula. Calumet's alum-phosphate mix was among the brands that survived the so-called baking powder wars of the period, when rival makers attacked one another's alum, cream of tartar and phosphate chemistry in print. A plain quick loaf like this one, with the graham variation appended, was the demonstration piece: no yeast, no waiting, bread on the table within the hour.