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Date Bread
Use recipe for Health Food Muffins (see p. 67). After the first rising, while kneading, add two-thirds cup each of English walnut meats cut in small pieces, and dates stoned and cut in pieces. Shape in a loaf, let rise in pan, and bake fifty minutes in a moderate oven. This bread is well adapted for sandwiches.
A variation rather than a standalone recipe: it hangs on the Health Food Muffin dough elsewhere in the book, a yeast-raised whole-meal batter-dough rather than a quick bread. A few notes on translating it.
- It is a yeast bread, not a quick breadThe references to a first rising, kneading, and a second rise in the pan mark this as a yeasted dough, despite "muffins" in the title of the parent recipe. Do not substitute a modern baking-powder date-nut loaf and expect the same timing.
- "Health food" flourThe parent recipe is not given here, so the exact flour is unclear; in this period the label was applied to whole wheat or entire-wheat flours, and sometimes to proprietary "health food" meals sold under that name. Modern whole-wheat flour is the nearest common substitute, and the dough may need its liquid adjusted.
- A moderate ovenConventionally read as somewhere around 350 to 375F. Fifty minutes at that heat suits a single loaf; the loaf is done at an internal temperature of about 200F, which is a more reliable test than the hollow-sounding thump.
- English walnut meatsSimply the common walnut, named to distinguish it from the black walnut then widely gathered in America. Ordinary shelled walnuts are what is wanted; black walnuts would give a far stronger, resinous flavour.
- Stoning the datesDates of the period were commonly sold unpitted, in pressed slabs or boxes, and had to be stoned by hand, as the recipe directs. Buy pitted dates and check for stray stones. Deglet Noor are drier; Medjool are much softer and will smear into the dough during kneading unless well floured.
- Working in the fruit and nutsTwo-thirds cup each is a heavy load for one loaf. Add them after the first rise as directed, folding rather than kneading hard, or the dates break down and the crumb turns gummy and dense. Tossing the cut dates in a little of the flour keeps them separate.
- Yield and servingOne loaf, about a dozen slices. The suggestion that it suits sandwiches means the thin, sweet tea sandwich of the era, usually spread with butter or cream cheese and cut in fingers.
Date and nut breads became common in American cookbooks in the decades either side of 1900. Their existence depended on trade: dates reached the eastern United States pressed into slabs or packed in boxes, much of the export trade passing through Basra on the Persian Gulf, and by the end of the nineteenth century they were cheap enough in eastern cities to be an everyday rather than a luxury sweetener. The "health food" flour of the parent recipe belongs to the same moment, when whole-meal breads were promoted by the dietary reform movement associated with Sylvester Graham and, later, with sanitarium cookery. The closing line about sandwiches is the practical point: a sweet, sliceable loaf suited both the afternoon tea table and the packed luncheon box.