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Common Brown Bread, Yeast Raised
1 pound of corn meal about 3 cupfuls. 1 pint of boiling water--2 cupfuls. 1/2 cupful of black molasses. 1 cupful of cold water. 1 cupful of yeast, or a yeast cake in water. 1/2 pound of either rye or graham flour. 1/2 pound of white flour, a heaping pint. Salt.
Pour the boiling water over the corn meal in a pan and mix, throw in a teaspoonful of salt, add the molasses and cold water, then the yeast and then the two kinds of flour. Line two sheet-iron brown bread pails with greased paper, put in the dough and let rise from one to two hours, then bake or steam for five hours. If steamed, bake the loaves afterward long enough to form a slight crust.
A good sort of bread is made as above with a pound of graham sifted through a common flour sieve to remove the coarse bran, and the white flour omitted; or with all rye flour and no graham or white. Care should be taken not to scald the yeast by adding it to the hot meal before the cold water. When this kind of bread is sticky when sliced it shows it was made up too wet. When the loaves come out hollow or caved in it shows too much fermentation.
A yeast-raised New England brown bread, made in cylindrical tin pails rather than loaf tins. The one thing to get right is the temperature of the meal before the yeast goes in — the recipe says so itself, and it is the difference between bread and a dense sour brick.
- Cool the mush firstThe boiling water scalds the cornmeal, and that mixture must come down before yeast touches it. Add the molasses and the cup of cold water, then check by hand or thermometer: below about 110F. If it still feels warm to the wrist, wait.
- The yeast measurement"1 cupful of yeast" means liquid yeast or barm kept in the house, roughly a cup of active sponge. "A yeast cake in water" is the cake alternative; period yeast cakes varied in strength, but for a modern kitchen roughly one packet of active dry yeast, 2 1/4 teaspoons, softened in a little warm water, is a workable substitute. Do not use a cup of modern yeast in any form.
- Brown bread pailsSheet-iron brown bread pails are straight-sided cylinders, typically somewhere around 4 inches across; the recipe itself specifies no lid. Clean 1-lb coffee tins or a pair of 1-quart pudding basins do the same job; grease and line with parchment as directed, and fill no more than two-thirds.
- Weights, not cupfulsThe pound-and-half-pound figures are the reliable ones: 1 lb cornmeal, 8 oz rye or graham, 8 oz white flour. The cup equivalents the author supplies are approximate and will drift depending on how the meal is scooped.
- Graham and black molassesGraham flour is coarse whole wheat; ordinary whole-wheat flour substitutes directly, and the variant that sifts out the coarse bran should give a lighter crumb. "Black molasses" here means a dark, strong cooking molasses; blackstrap is probably harsher than intended.
- Five hours means low and slowA five-hour bake only makes sense in a slow, cooling oven; the recipe names no temperature, but somewhere around 275-300F is a reasonable modern reading. At that heat in deep pails the loaves behave more like steaming than baking; a modern doneness check is an internal 200-205F.
- SteamingSet the covered pails on a rack in a deep pot with water halfway up their sides, lid on, and keep it at a bare simmer, topping up as needed. Then 15-20 minutes uncovered at 350F to dry the surface into the "slight crust" the author wants.
- Reading the loafThe final diagnostics are still sound. A gummy, sticky slice means the dough was too slack; a hollow or sunken top means it over-proved. Judge the rise by volume, not by the clock — one to two hours is a wide window and depends entirely on room temperature.
- YieldTwo pails. The made dough weighs well over four pounds, so expect loaves nearer two pounds each. Brown bread slices best cold, in thin rounds, and is traditionally eaten with baked beans or buttered for breakfast.
Brown bread of this kind is the household bread of New England, built on the region's two cheap staples: cornmeal and molasses from the West Indies trade. Its older name was "rye and Injun" — rye flour and Indian meal, the mixture colonial cooks fell back on because wheat grew poorly in New England soil — and thirds bread, using rye, corn and wheat together, is the same idea with the proportions written down. By the time this book was printed, brown bread was often leavened chemically with soda and baked or steamed quickly, which is why the title here specifies "Yeast Raised": it marks the older, slower method as the exception. The cylindrical pails are often said to descend from the steamed-pudding tradition, and they explain the round slices still associated with canned brown bread today.