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Quick Graham Bread
One and a half pints sour milk, half cup New Orleans molasses, a little salt, two tea-spoons soda dissolved in a little hot water, and as much Graham flour as can be stirred in with a spoon; pour in well-greased pan, put in oven as soon as mixed, and bake two hours. -Mrs. E. J. W.
A soda-risen batter bread of the plainest kind: sour milk, molasses, soda and enough coarse flour to make a stiff spoonable batter. The only real judgement calls are the flour quantity and the bake.
- Get it into the oven immediatelyThe soda begins reacting with the acid in the milk the moment it is stirred in, and there is no baking powder to give a second lift in the heat. "Put in oven as soon as mixed" is the hinge of the recipe, not a stylistic flourish.
- One and a half pintsThree cups of sour milk. Cultured buttermilk is the direct modern substitute; ordinary milk soured with vinegar is thinner and less acidic.
- Sour milk, not spoiled milkNineteenth-century sour milk was raw milk clabbered by lactic bacteria. Pasteurised milk left on the counter does not clabber, it putrefies. Use buttermilk.
- New Orleans molassesA dark cane molasses, not blackstrap. Half a cup of any dark molasses is right; blackstrap is markedly more bitter.
- Graham flourCoarse whole-wheat flour carrying the bran and germ, named for Sylvester Graham. Stone-ground whole wheat is the nearest thing; no flour figure is given, and grinds absorb differently in any case. Stop when a spoon will just move through the batter and it drops rather than pours.
- The ovenNo temperature or oven term is given; a two-hour bake suggests a moderate to slow oven. In a modern oven, 325F in a well-greased loaf pan is sensible, and the loaf will likely be done well before two hours.
- Test rather than timeA skewer should come out clean and the centre should read 200-205F. Graham batters stay damp-looking at the crumb even when baked, so the thermometer is more reliable than the eye.
- YieldOne large loaf, or two smaller ones. It slices best fully cooled, and like most molasses quick breads it improves on the second day.
Graham flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the Presbyterian minister and dietary reformer whose 1830s lectures urged coarse unbolted wheat on a public he thought had been ruined by fine white bread. By the time The Dixie Cook Book appeared, the reform argument had largely faded and graham flour had settled in as an ordinary household staple, valued for cheapness and keeping quality as much as for virtue. The recipe belongs to the great family of soda breads that came out of the mid-century arrival of cheap saleratus and, later, purified bicarbonate: sour milk supplied the acid, the soda supplied the gas, and the cook was spared both yeast and the hours of waiting it demanded. Molasses does double duty here, sweetening the coarse flour and adding its own acidity. The initials at the end are typical of the book, which was assembled from contributions and reprints and credits its cooks the way a church supper program does.