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Boston Brown Bread
1 cup corn-meal
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup rye flour
¾ cup molasses
1 cup graham flour
2 cups sour milk or 1¾ cup
¾ tablespoon soda sweet milk
Mix and sift the ingredients. Mix the molasses and milk and add to the dry ingredients. Beat thoroughly and turn into wellgreased molds, filling each mold about two-thirds full. Cover and steam three hours. Remove the covers and bake the bread long enough to dry it off.
A standard steamed three-grain brown bread, leavened entirely by soda reacting with molasses and sour milk. The proportions are sound; the vessels and the sour milk are what need translating.
- Sour milk means buttermilkNineteenth-century "sour milk" was raw milk naturally clabbered, mildly acidic and thick. Cultured buttermilk is the direct substitute, cup for cup. Modern pasteurised milk left out does not sour, it spoils; if you use the sweet-milk option, note that the soda then has only the molasses to react with and the crumb will be denser and darker.
- The soda measureThree-quarters of a tablespoon is 2¼ teaspoons, an unusual quantity that reads like a scaled recipe. It is a lot of soda, but it is buffered by the acid in both the buttermilk and the molasses. Sift it thoroughly with the flours or you will get bitter yellow streaks.
- Graham flourCoarse whole-wheat flour milled with the bran and germ returned, named for Sylvester Graham. Stone-ground whole wheat is the closest current equivalent; ordinary whole-wheat flour works and gives a slightly finer crumb.
- MolassesUse unsulphured dark molasses, not blackstrap. Blackstrap is far more bitter and mineral than the table molasses of 1900 and will dominate the loaf.
- MoldsThe traditional vessel is a 1-lb coffee tin or a cylindrical pudding mold with a lid. Any straight-sided heatproof container will do, greased and filled two-thirds full, covered tightly with foil tied down; the bread needs room to rise and must be sealed against condensation.
- Steaming setupStand the molds on a rack in a deep pot, add boiling water to come halfway up their sides, cover the pot and keep it at a bare simmer. Check the water level hourly and top up with boiling water so the pot never runs dry.
- Three hours is rightUnlike many old timings, this one holds. Steaming is what gives the loaf its moist, close, almost pudding-like crumb; hurrying it leaves the centre gummy. A skewer should come out clean.
- Drying off"Bake long enough to dry it off" means uncovered in the oven; the recipe gives neither temperature nor time. A moderate oven of roughly 350F for 10 to 15 minutes, just until the surface loses its wet sheen, works in a modern range. Turn the loaves out while still warm.
- YieldAbout two 1-lb loaves. Serve warm in slices cut with a taut string or a serrated knife; the crumb is too tender to slice cleanly with a chef's knife.
Brown bread belongs to the New England tradition of steamed puddings and Saturday-night baked beans, and the two were commonly served together. Its three grains reflect what colonial and early-republic New England actually had in quantity: maize, rye and wheat, with molasses from the West Indies trade standing in for sugar. The combination of corn and rye was common enough to have its own name, "rye and Injun." Steaming rather than baking suited a household with a pot on the fire and no reliable oven, and it produces a keeping loaf that stays moist for days. By the time this Butterick volume appeared, brown bread had become a fixed regional emblem rather than a necessity; the recipe depends on soda and acid rather than yeast.