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Graham Bread - Unfermented
One and one-half pints graham flour, one-half pint of flour, one tablespoon sugar, one teaspoon salt, two teaspoons baking powder, 1 and one-fourth pints milk, or equal parts of milk and water.
Sift graham flour, sugar, salt and powder together; add the milk, or milk and water; mix rapidly into soft dough, then put in greased tin. Bake in rather hot oven about forty minutes. Protect loaf with paper first fifteen minutes.
A plain quick bread built on volume measures rather than weight, from the era when a household measured flour by the pint. Nothing here is difficult, but the proportions read strangely until the units are translated.
- The pints, translatedA pint is two cups, so this is 3 cups graham flour, 1 cup white flour, and 2 1/2 cups milk (or milk and water). That is a very wet mixture by modern bread standards, closer to a thick batter than a kneadable dough, which is correct for this style.
- Graham flourCoarse-ground whole wheat with the bran and germ left in. Ordinary stone-ground whole wheat is the nearest substitute; standard fine whole wheat flour works but gives a smoother, less nubbly crumb.
- Sifting the branSifting graham flour leaves the bran behind in the sieve. Tip it back into the bowl afterward, or the loaf loses the character the recipe is named for.
- "Rather hot oven"Roughly 400-425F in a modern oven. Period oven names were never standardised, but such terms are generally read as sitting between a moderate and a quick oven.
- The paperCovering the loaf for the first fifteen minutes keeps the crust from setting and browning before the wet interior has risen. A loose tent of parchment or foil does the job; remove it to let the top colour for the remaining time.
- Leavening and timingTwo teaspoons of baking powder for four cups of flour is modest, so mix rapidly and get the pan into the oven at once. The recipe specifies only a greased tin; a standard 9x5 loaf tin is a reasonable modern choice, and forty minutes suits it. Test at the centre for 200-205F rather than trusting the clock, as this batter is wet.
- YieldOne loaf. It slices best fully cooled, and being unyeasted it stales quickly, so it is at its best the day it is baked or toasted thereafter.
"Unfermented" is the key word in the title: it signals bread raised by baking powder rather than yeast rather than by a ferment. The flour carries a name too, that of Sylvester Graham, the American temperance and dietary reformer of the 1830s whose followers urged coarse, unbolted wheat meal on a public they thought had grown soft on fine white flour. By the time of a book like this one, graham flour had largely settled into a pantry staple, reached for when a brown loaf was wanted. Quick breads of this kind demanded no starter, no overnight rise and no judgment about proofing, only accurate measuring and a hot oven.