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Boston Brown Bread (II)
Mrs. F. E. Stearns.
One and one-half cups of Graham flour, two cups of orn meal, one-half cup of molasses, one pint of sweet ilk, and one-half a teaspoon of soda; steam three Durs.
A plain steamed brown bread of the New England type: no yeast, no wheat bread flour, and no baking. The batter is thin and pours rather than kneads.
- Graham flourWhole wheat flour is the direct substitute. Graham flour was coarsely ground whole wheat including the bran and germ; a stone-ground whole wheat gives the closest texture.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, as opposed to the buttermilk or sour milk many recipes of the period call for. Whole milk is what the writer had. A pint is 2 cups.
- The leaveningHalf a teaspoon of soda for three and a half cups of meal and flour is modest, and it depends entirely on the molasses for the acid it reacts with. Use a real unsulphured molasses, not a light syrup, or the loaf will be dense and taste faintly soapy.
- No salt listedThe recipe gives none; salt is frequently omitted from terse community-cookbook entries like this. About a teaspoon added to the dry ingredients makes a noticeable difference.
- The vesselGrease a 2-quart pudding mould, coffee tin or straight-sided pan (or divide between two smaller tins), fill no more than two-thirds, and cover it tightly with foil or a lid so condensation does not drip in. The loaf rises against the cover.
- Steaming, not bakingSet the covered mould on a rack in a deep pot, add boiling water to come halfway up the side, cover the pot and keep the water at a bare simmer. Top up with more boiling water as it evaporates over the long cooking.
- Three hoursThat is genuinely the time this takes; steamed breads cook slowly and gently. Test with a skewer to the centre.
- Yield and servingOne loaf, about eight to ten slices. Cut warm with a length of string or a serrated knife rather than pressing down with a blade, and serve with butter, or with baked beans in the traditional way.
Steamed brown bread belongs to a New England kitchen economy built on cornmeal, molasses from the West Indies trade, and a stovetop rather than a bread oven: it needed no yeast, no rising time, and no heat beyond a pot of simmering water. The Graham flour in the list points to the mid-century enthusiasm for Sylvester Graham's coarse unsifted wheat, which had entered ordinary baking by the time community cookbooks like this one were being compiled and was sold plainly as Graham flour for decades after. The pairing with Saturday-night baked beans is the association most often cited for the loaf, though it is better treated as a widely repeated tradition than an established fact, and the presence of two Boston brown bread recipes in one book is a fair sign of how many households kept their own slightly different version.