No. 3423

Rye Bread, Boston Brown Bread and Graham Bread

Pain de Seigle, Pain Brun de Boston et Pain de Graham

The dough for rye bread is made exactly as for ordinary bread (see the article on bread dough), the only difference being that half rye and half wheat flour are used; a few caraway seeds may be added to the dough, mixing them in when the kneading process begins. When the dough is finished and sufficiently raised, cut it into two-pound pieces, turn and roll them out long-shaped and lay them in the folds of linen exactly the same as the jockos. Just when ready to put into the oven, while still on the peel, dampen the tops with water, using a brush, and cut a few slanting incisions on each one with the tip of a small knife, then set them in the oven to bake for forty-five minutes.

Boston Brown Bread.—Place in a basin two and three-quarter pounds of yellow corn meal, two pounds of white corn meal, one and three-quarter pounds of rye flour, one pound of Boston meal and an ounce of salt. Dilute these flours with one pint of New Orleans molasses, one pint of Potter molasses, one quart of ferment (No. 3410), and two quarts of water; mix all well together, making a very soft paste, then cover over and leave it in a mild temperature to raise for four hours. Then add three-quarters of an ounce of soda dissolved in a glassful of water and twelve ounces of stale bread sifted through a sieve; ming le all well together. With this paste fill three-quarters full some buttered timbale molds and leave the paste stand for one hour. Cover over and place in a very slow oven and let bake for six hours.

Graham Bread.—Put into a large vessel one and a quarter pounds of wheat flour, one and a quarter pounds of Graham flour, a coffeespoonful of salt and half a gill of molasses. Onto these ingredients pour one and a quarter pints of leaven, and one and a quarter pints of water. Mix all well together forming a dough of the same consistence as for bread; cover and leave it to raise for two hours in a mild temperature. Divide the dough into pound and a quarter pieces, mold and place each one in buttered molds; let raise again for an hour and a half to two hours, then bake in a very slack oven. Graham flour is made of the wheat ground to flour and left unsifted, consequently it contains the bran and commoner qualities than other flours.

ICES (Glaces).

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For the Modern Kitchen

Three commercial-bakery formulas from Delmonico's, written for a professional shop with a wood-fired oven and a liquid yeast ferment always on hand. Weights are large and several ingredients are trade names rather than things a grocer sells now.

Scale down firstThe Boston brown bread starts with 7 1/2 lb of meal and flour plus a quart of ferment and two quarts of water, enough to fill a bench of molds. Divide by four or six before you begin. The Graham formula is smaller: 2 1/2 lb of flour and about 2 1/2 pints of liquid, divided into 1 1/4 lb pieces, or roughly four loaves. The rye gives no quantities at all, only a two-pound loaf size.
"Ferment (No. 3410)" and "leaven"Both mean a liquid yeast preferment, a thin batter of flour, water and barm left to work. A poolish of equal weights flour and water with a pinch of instant yeast, ripened overnight, is the nearest equivalent by volume and behavior.
Boston mealA trade term of the period, no longer current and not securely defined; it is usually taken to be a coarse unbolted wheat meal. Coarse whole wheat meal is the honest substitution, and the recipe is not delicate about it.
Potter molassesA trade or grade name of the period rather than a flavor note; the relative color of the two molasses is not recorded. Any two molasses of differing depth, or a straight unsulphured molasses, will carry the loaf.
Oven temperaturesRanhofer gives only 'very slow' for the brown bread and 'very slack' for the Graham; by the usual modern equivalences those fall around 250-275F and 300-325F. Six hours in covered molds is close to steaming. No oven heat is specified for the rye -- a hot oven with steam at the start is a modern suggestion, not the book's instruction.
Gills and coffeespoonsHalf a gill of molasses is 1/4 cup. A coffeespoonful is roughly a scant teaspoon, smaller than a modern teaspoon measure.
The folds of linenProofing the shaped rye loaves "in the folds of linen" is a couche, which supports the slack rye dough so it rises upward rather than out. Flour the cloth heavily; rye is sticky and will weld itself to bare linen.
Twelve ounces of sifted stale breadProbably not filler for its own sake; old bread crumb would absorb some of the very wet brown bread batter. Dry the bread hard before sieving or it will clump.
Soda after the long riseThe 3/4 oz of soda goes in at the end, after four hours of fermentation, to neutralize the acidity the ferment has built and give a last lift. Mix it in and get the molds filled promptly.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the working formulas of the Delmonico's kitchens, which is why three unrelated loaves share one entry: they were the bakeshop's non-white breads. Boston brown bread belongs to a New England tradition of "thirded" bread, corn, rye and wheat in combination, born of a region where wheat grew poorly and maize did not, and traditionally cooked by long steaming in a covered mold rather than in the oven, which is what Ranhofer's six hours in a very slow oven amounts to. Graham flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the Presbyterian minister and dietary reformer of the 1830s who preached coarse unbolted wheat against the fashionable white loaf; by Ranhofer's day the name had detached from the crusade and simply meant whole wheat meal, which is roughly how he explains it in his closing line. That a French chef at New York's most celebrated restaurant kept all three on the roster says something about how firmly American these breads had become.