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Graham Muffins
Makes about thirty. 2 pounds of graham roll dough. 2 ounces of butter. 2 ounces (a bastingspoonful) of molasses. 1/2 cupful of milk. 2 whole eggs and 2 yolks.
Take the dough that has been already prepared for making rolls. Warm it and the butter in a pan together. Put in the other ingredients and beat all together about 5 minutes. Grease tin muffin rings or gem pans. Half fill them. Rise half an hour. Bake 10 minutes. Brush over with butter or hot water. But if you have no light dough made the muffins can be set from the beginning with: 1 pound graham; 1/2 pound white flour; 3/4 pint milk; 1 cup yeast; salt, molasses, eggs, butter, as in foregoing receipt. Mix and let rise 4 hours. Beat 5 minutes, rise in rings till light, then bake. Many of the people in poor health who frequent the springs and pleasure places for recuperation are extremely critical in the matter of such hygienic articles of diet as graham rolls and gems, and all the hints here given will be found useful in the endeavor to meet their requirements.
This is a yeast-raised muffin, not a chemically leavened one, and the first version assumes you already have a batch of graham roll dough working. The second set of quantities lets you start from scratch.
- Graham flourGraham is coarsely ground whole wheat, bran and germ included. Modern stone-ground whole wheat is the closest match; standard whole-wheat flour works but gives a finer crumb than the book intends.
- "1 cup yeast"This means a cup of liquid yeast or barm, not dry granules, and its strength varied from kitchen to kitchen. About 2 teaspoons of instant yeast will raise this quantity of dough; reduce the milk slightly or the batter goes slack, since the cup of barm was also a cup of liquid.
- BastingspoonfulThe recipe glosses it as 2 ounces. Whether that is weight or fluid measure is not clear: 2 fluid ounces is a scant quarter cup, while 2 ounces by weight of molasses is nearer 2 1/2 tablespoons. Use unsulphured molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and will fight the wheat.
- Gem pans and muffin ringsGem pans are heavy cast-iron trays with shallow oval cups. A standard 12-cup muffin tin works; grease it well and preheat it if it is cast iron, which is what gives these their crisp shell.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because the book assumes a baker's judgment. A ten-minute bake implies a hot oven; something in the region of 425F is a reasonable modern equivalent. At that heat, check at 12-15 minutes in a modern tin; the muffins should sound hollow and pull slightly from the sides.
- Half fill, and mean itThese rise in the pan and then spring in the oven. Filling more than halfway gives you mushroomed tops that tear away from the base.
- The final brushButter gives gloss and softness; hot water gives a thin, chewy crust. Do it the moment they come out, while steam is still escaping.
- YieldThirty from 2 pounds of dough means small gem-sized muffins. Expect 14-16 from a standard muffin tin.
Graham flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the Presbyterian preacher and dietary reformer whose 1830s campaign against refined white flour made unsifted whole wheat a marker of virtuous eating in America. By the time this book was written, graham rolls, gems and muffins had become fixtures of hotel and spa cookery, which is exactly what the closing note describes: the invalids and convalescents who filled the mineral-springs resorts expected hygienic bread on the table and complained loudly when they did not get it. The recipe's structure, built on two pounds of dough already made for something else, points to a kitchen where the same batch of graham dough would be turned into rolls at breakfast and muffins at supper. The molasses and eggs soften what would otherwise be a dense, bran-heavy crumb, a quiet concession to palates that wanted health food to taste like cake.