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Graham Bread
Mrs. J. B. Hobbs.
For one loaf, take two cups of white bread sponge, to which add two tablespoons of brown sugar, and Graham flour to make a stiff batter; let it rise, after which add Graham flour sufficient to knead, but not very stiff; then put in the pan to rise and bake.
This is a sponge-method loaf written for a cook who already had bread going: it assumes you have a bowl of white sponge working on the back of the stove and want one dark loaf out of it. Everything the original leaves out — quantities, times, oven heat — has to be supplied from practice.
- What the sponge is"White bread sponge" is the slack first-stage batter of a white loaf: flour, water and yeast beaten smooth and left until foamy and domed. Two cups of it is roughly a pound. If you are not baking white bread the same day, make a sponge from 1 cup water, 1 1/2 cups bread flour and 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast and let it work 2 to 4 hours until bubbly and sour-smelling.
- Graham flourCoarse whole wheat, ground from the whole berry and left unsifted, so it includes the bran and germ. Modern stone-ground whole wheat is the closest thing; ordinary roller-milled whole wheat flour works but gives a finer, tamer crumb.
- The hinge: keep it slackThe instruction "sufficient to knead, but not very stiff" is the whole recipe. Bran cuts gluten strands, so a Graham dough stiffened to the feel of white bread dough bakes into a brick. Stop adding flour while the dough is still tacky and only just holds a shape.
- Hydration lagWhole wheat keeps absorbing water for 15 to 20 minutes after mixing. Let the kneaded dough rest before you judge it too wet; more often than not it firms up on its own and needs no extra flour.
- Rising timesThe first rise, after the Graham flour goes into the sponge as a stiff batter, takes about an hour until visibly puffed. The shaped loaf in the pan wants 45 to 75 minutes, until it has risen by half again — whole wheat loaves do not double reliably, and waiting for a double often means a collapsed top.
- Oven and panThe book gives no heat because the cook judged her own stove. Bake at 375°F in a greased 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch loaf pan for 40 to 50 minutes. Done is an internal temperature of 200–205°F, not a hollow-sounding thump, which is unreliable in a dense loaf.
- The sugarTwo tablespoons of brown sugar is for colour and a little sweetness against the bran, not for feeding the yeast — the sponge is already active. Molasses turns up often as the sweetener in period Graham bread recipes, and gives the darker, moister loaf many people associate with this bread.
- YieldOne loaf, about twelve slices. It stales quickly, as bread with no fat and no milk does; expect to eat it the day it is baked or toast it after.
Graham flour and Graham bread take their name from Sylvester Graham, the Connecticut-born Presbyterian preacher and temperance lecturer who in the 1830s urged Americans to give up bolted white flour, meat and stimulants in favour of coarse home-ground wheat. By the time The Home Cook Book was compiled in Chicago in the 1870s from recipes contributed by local women — Mrs. J. B. Hobbs among the many named donors — the reform argument had faded and Graham bread had simply become a household staple, valued for keeping the family regular and for using up an inexpensive flour. That it is built on a borrowed cup or two of white bread sponge says a good deal about how such kitchens worked: yeast was a living thing to be kept going, and a second loaf of a different kind was made by diverting part of the batch already at work rather than starting anything new.