Raisin Bread
Same as for Calumet Bread, but add: 1/3 cup sugar 1 cup raisins Add sugar with flour and add raisins when partly mixed.
This is a variation, not a standalone recipe: everything depends on the Calumet Bread it points back to, so find that page first. What the note actually teaches is the order of operations for a sweetened, fruited quick loaf.
- The hinge: when the raisins go in"Partly mixed" most likely means the flour is not yet fully incorporated. Adding the raisins at that point lets them distribute with the last few strokes instead of requiring extra beating, which would toughen a chemically leavened loaf.
- Sugar with the flourThe sugar is treated as a dry ingredient rather than creamed with fat, which is standard for a batter bread. Whisk it through the flour and baking powder so it does not sink and caramelise on the bottom.
- Calumet baking powderCalumet was a double-acting phosphate and aluminium powder. Any modern double-acting baking powder substitutes measure for measure; if the base recipe calls for a single-acting or cream-of-tartar powder, get the loaf into the oven immediately after mixing.
- RaisinsA cup of raisins at this period could well have meant seeded muscats, larger and moister than today's Thompson seedless. Plumping them in hot water for ten minutes and drying them, or tossing them in a spoonful of the measured flour, helps keep them from settling.
- OvenThe base recipe's temperature governs. If it gives none, a quick loaf of this type is usually baked around 350F, roughly 45 to 60 minutes in a loaf pan, until a skewer comes out clean and the internal temperature is around 200F.
- YieldCannot be determined without the base recipe. Cool the loaf completely before slicing; warm quick bread with fruit in it tears.
- An honest gapBecause the flour, liquid and fat are not repeated here, there is no way to scale this note on its own. Do not guess at the base proportions from the sugar and raisins.
Reliable Recipes was a promotional cookbook issued by the Calumet Baking Powder Company of Chicago, which built its business in the late nineteenth century on cheap, dependable double-acting powder and gave away recipe booklets to keep the tin in the pantry. Pages like this one show the house style clearly: a single master formula, here Calumet Bread, followed by a stack of two-line variations that each promise a different loaf without requiring the cook to learn a new recipe. Raisins were among the variations. By the 1910s California growers were shipping seeded muscats and Thompson seedless east in quantity at prices that put dried fruit within easy reach, and a raisin loaf leavened with baking powder could be mixed and baked in an afternoon, with none of the proofing a yeasted fruit bread demanded.