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Brown Bread
One pint of corn meal; one-half cup of yeast, or one-half cake; one-half cup of molasses; one-half teaspoon of salt; one saltspoon of soda; one pint of rye meal. Place the corn meal in a mixing bowl, and scald it with just enough boiling water to wet it. Let it stand ten minutes; then put in cold water enough to make a soft batter. When the batter is lukewarm, add the yeast and the molasses, the soda dissolved in a little cold water, the salt and the rye meal. Beat the mixture well, and let it rise over night; or if made in the morning let it rise until it cracks open. Then stir it down, put it in a buttered and floured tin to rise again, and sprinkle flour over the top. Bake in a moderate oven for two hours.
STEAMED BROWN BREAD (Sour Milk) - Three cups sour milk; three-fourths cup of molasses; a tablespoon shortening (half butter and lard); one dessertspoon soda; a teaspoon salt; two cups each of Indian meal and graham flour. Steam three and one-half or four hours. Cover the vessel in which it is cooking, and do not let water stop boiling after it begins. Keep plenty of boiling water at hand to add from time to time. Raisins may be added to any of the recipes for steamed brown bread.
Two brown breads in one entry: a yeast-risen loaf baked in the oven, and the more familiar steamed loaf leavened with soda and sour milk. Both depend on coarse meals that behave nothing like white flour.
- The measuresA pint is 2 cups, so the yeast loaf uses 2 cups cornmeal to 2 cups rye meal. A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon; a dessertspoon is 2 teaspoons, so the steamed loaf takes about 2 teaspoons of soda for 3 cups of sour milk.
- YeastHalf a compressed cake is roughly 1/4 ounce of fresh yeast, or about 1 1/4 teaspoons of active dry. Half a cup of "yeast" means the old liquid homemade yeast and is not interchangeable with modern packets.
- The mealsIndian meal is cornmeal; graham flour is coarse whole wheat. Rye meal is coarser than rye flour and gives the loaf its chew. Any of them can be replaced by the finer modern equivalent, but the crumb will be softer and wetter.
- Sour milkCultured buttermilk is the right substitute. It supplies the acid the soda needs; fresh milk will leave the loaf soapy-tasting and flat.
- Scalding the corn mealThis is the hinge of the yeast loaf. Cornmeal is thirsty and gritty, and pouring boiling water over it first gelatinizes the starch so the crumb is moist rather than sandy. Do not skip the ten-minute rest, and let the batter cool to lukewarm before the yeast goes in, or you will kill it.
- A moderate ovenAbout 350F. Two hours is right for a dense, molasses-heavy loaf in a deep tin; check for an internal temperature near 200F rather than relying on a clean skewer, since molasses stays tacky.
- Steaming setupFill a greased mold or a tall can two-thirds full, cover it, and set it on a rack in a pot with water reaching halfway up. Keep the water at a steady boil and top it up with boiling water only, as the recipe insists: a stall in the steam drops the loaf.
- Steaming timeThree and a half to four hours suits a single large mold. In two smaller cans, 2 to 2 1/2 hours is enough. Modern practice often finishes a steamed brown bread with 10 to 15 minutes uncovered in a 350F oven to dry the surface.
- YieldThe yeast loaf makes one large loaf; the steamed batter may fill one large mold or two smaller ones. Both slice best fully cooled, and both improve the next day.
Brown bread of this kind is the New England household loaf, built on the grains that grew well in the region and the molasses that arrived through the coastal trade: corn, rye, and later graham flour, sweetened and colored with molasses rather than sugar. The yeast-risen "rye and Indian" loaf is the older form. Steamed brown bread is traditionally paired with Saturday baked beans, and the pairing is often explained by the bean pot occupying the oven, though that account is tradition rather than documented fact. Soda-and-sour-milk versions circulated alongside the slow overnight yeast rise, and both appear here. The note that raisins may be added to any steamed brown bread reflects how loosely the recipe was held in practice: every household had its own proportion of meal to flour.