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Buttermilk Bread
When buttermilk can be obtained conveniently a delicious kind of bread may be made. For three good-sized loaves use one quart of sour buttermilk; one generous tablespoon of sugar; one level tablespoon of salt; three tablespoons of butter; one teaspoon of soda and two and three-fourths quarts of flour. Heat the buttermilk to the boiling point, stirring it frequently to prevent curdling. Put the sugar in a large bowl and pour the hot milk on it. Now gradually sift into this mixture one quart of flour, stirring all the while. Beat well; then cover and let it stand in a warm room over night, say from 9.30 p. m. to 6.30 a. m. In the morning dissolve the soda in three tablespoons of water and add to it the latter together with the salt and melted butter. Beat thoroughly, then gradually beat in the remainder of the flour, reserving, however, one-half cup for kneading. Sprinkle the board with flour, and, turning the dough upon it, knead for fifteen or twenty minutes. Divide into three parts and shape into loaves. Place in buttered pans and put into the oven immediately. Bake for one hour.
GRAHAM BREAD, No. I-One quart of graham flour and one cup of plain wheat flour. Mix with one pint of milk and one cup of molasses, add pinch of salt, a small teaspoon of soda and onehalf yeast cake. Stir up at night and set to rise. In the morning stir down well and put in pans. Let rise for a half hour and then bake.
GRAHAM BREAD, No. 2-For one loaf of graham bread dissolve one-fourth of a yeast cake in one-fourth of a cup of warm water (if preferred, one-third of a cup of soft yeast can be used instead), and when cool add one cup of scalded milk; one tablespoon of molasses; one-fourth of a teaspoon of salt, and one-half a cup of white flour; then thicken with sifted graham flour to make a batter. Let the mass stand in a warm place until light; then stir in graham flour to make it stiff, pour into a baking-dish and when it is half raised, bake for one hour.
Three recipes in one entry: a soda-and-sponge buttermilk loaf that uses no yeast at all, and two graham breads that do. The buttermilk loaf is the interesting one, and it turns on speed at the end.
- Into the oven immediatelyThe only leavening in the buttermilk loaf is the soda reacting with the sour milk, plus whatever lift the overnight sponge has developed. That reaction begins the moment the dissolved soda goes in, so the shaped loaves go straight into a preheated oven with no proof. Any waiting on the bench is gas lost.
- No oven temperature is givenThe book assumes a range you have judged by hand. For three loaves baked one hour, 375F is the sensible reading; check for an internal temperature around 200F rather than trusting the clock.
- Measure by volume, then adjustOne quart of buttermilk is 4 cups; two and three-quarter quarts of flour is 11 cups, roughly 3 lb. That is a very large batch by modern standards and the flour figure is a maximum, not a target. Nineteenth-century flour absorbed differently; hold back more than the half cup specified and stop when the dough is smooth and only slightly tacky.
- Scalding buttermilkButtermilk curdles at the boil no matter how much you stir; constant stirring keeps the curds fine rather than preventing them. The graininess disappears once the flour goes in. Cultured supermarket buttermilk works, though it is milder than the true churn byproduct the book means.
- The overnight spongeNine hours at room temperature with no added yeast. Note that the buttermilk has been taken to the boil before the flour goes in, so its own culture is dead; whatever activity develops comes from stray organisms in the flour and the air, and the sponge does as much to sour and hydrate the flour as to leaven it. Expect something that smells sour and looks slack rather than visibly puffed. A quarter teaspoon of instant yeast in the sponge is the honest fix if you want reliable volume.
- Fifteen to twenty minutes of kneadingThat is hand-kneading time for a stiff 3 lb dough. A stand mixer with a dough hook does the same work in 8 to 10 minutes on low.
- Yeast cakes in the graham breadsA yeast cake was compressed fresh yeast; sizes varied by maker and period, the familiar modern cake being about 0.6 oz. On that basis half a cake is roughly 1 teaspoon of instant dry yeast and a quarter cake about half a teaspoon. "Soft yeast" was a home-kept liquid yeast or barm and has no direct equivalent.
- Graham flourCoarsely ground whole wheat, milled with the bran and germ left in. Modern stone-ground whole wheat is the closest substitute; standard whole wheat flour also works but bakes a tighter crumb.
- YieldThree loaves in roughly 8x4 inch pans from the buttermilk recipe. Graham Bread No. 2 makes a single loaf and is closer to a stiff batter than a kneaded dough, poured rather than shaped.
Buttermilk bread of this kind belongs to a household economy in which butter was churned at home and the acid liquid left behind had to be used up the same day or two. Pairing it with soda became common American practice from roughly the 1840s, as saleratus and soda spread in American kitchens, since the acid in the milk gives the alkali something to react with; what makes this version unusual is the overnight sponge, which treats the buttermilk as a fermentation starter as well as a chemical one and so straddles the older barm-and-sponge method and the newer quick-bread chemistry. The two graham breads beside it point to another current of the period: the coarse unsifted wheat flour named for Sylvester Graham, the temperance preacher and dietary reformer whose followers argued through the 1830s and after that white flour had been stripped of what mattered. In time graham flour detached from the reform movement and settled in as an ordinary pantry item, molasses-sweetened and baked in a loaf tin like anything else.