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English Home-Made Brown Bread
3 pounds of sifted graham flour. 1 quart of warm water. 1/2 ounce of compressed yeast. 1 teaspoonful of salt.
By sifted graham is meant flour with the coarsest bran taken out. Commence 7 or 8 hours before time to bake. Dissolve the yeast in the water and mix up half the flour with it, that is "setting sponge." Place the pan in a warm corner, to remain 4 hours. Then throw in the salt, mix up to stiff dough, scrape out the pan and knead smooth. Brush over the pan with the least possible amount of melted lard, or lard and hot water to prevent sticking, put in the lump of dough and brush it over, and let rise 2 hours more. Then knead, make into loaves, rise again and bake.
Where potato yeast is used instead of compressed, take about one-fourth as much yeast as water.
The foregoing is the kind of bread fashionably served with stewed slices of fish.
A straightforward sponge-and-dough whole wheat loaf, but the book assumes you know what temperature to bake bread at and how much a cake of compressed yeast weighs. Here is what needs translating.
- Sifted grahamGraham flour is coarsely ground whole wheat, bran and germ included. "Sifted" means passing it through a medium sieve and discarding the largest bran flakes, which cut gluten strands and give a crumbly loaf. Modern stone-ground whole wheat sifted the same way works; so does a mix of two parts whole wheat to one part bread flour.
- The yeastHalf an ounce of compressed (fresh) yeast is about 14 g. That converts to roughly 1 1/2 teaspoons of instant dry yeast, or a scant 2 teaspoons of active dry. The long 4-hour sponge is built around this small quantity; do not increase it.
- Potato yeast substitution"One-fourth as much yeast as water" means about a cup of homemade potato yeast to the quart of water: a liquid barm, not a cake. Whether that cup is extra to the quart or counted within it is not clear from the text, so the flour may need adjusting.
- HydrationThree pounds of flour to a quart of water is about 70 percent hydration, high but correct for whole wheat, which drinks more than white. The dough will feel slack at first and firm up as the bran hydrates during the sponge. Resist adding flour before kneading.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. In a modern oven, bake at 425F for the first 15 minutes, then drop to 375F for another 25 to 35 minutes. The loaves are done at an internal temperature of 200-205F.
- Greasing the pan"The least possible amount of melted lard" goes on the rising pan, not the loaf tin, and the recipe's stated reason is to prevent sticking; the dough is brushed too, which also keeps it from skinning. Neutral oil or butter does the same job; lard is not required for flavour here.
- Total time and yieldFour hours of sponge, two hours of bulk, then shaping and a final proof of about an hour: the seven or eight hours the headnote promises. Expect two large loaves or three modest ones from this quantity.
- ServingThe closing line says only that this bread was "fashionably served with stewed slices of fish," i.e. as an accompaniment to the dish; brown bread is still served with smoked and potted fish, though the recipe gives no detail on how it was cut or dressed.
Graham flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the American temperance preacher and dietary reformer of the 1830s who campaigned for coarse unbolted wheat against the fashionable white loaf; by the time this book was written the word was commonly used to mean little more than whole wheat. The name "English home-made brown bread" may reflect the late-nineteenth-century reframing of brown bread as a genteel, health-conscious choice rather than the cheap bread of the poor, but that is inference, not something the book states. Compressed yeast was widely available by this period; homemade potato and hop barms were nonetheless still in use, which is why the recipe accommodates them in its last lines.