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Steamed Brown Bread
Mrs. C. G. Smith.
One pint of sweet milk, four tablespoons of molasses, ne cup of Indian meal, two cups of Rye or Graham flour, ne teaspoon of salt, one of saleratus ; mix with a spoon. nd steam three hours, and bake half an hour or more.
A standard New England steamed brown bread: no yeast, no kneading, just a batter leavened chemically and cooked in moist heat. The batter should be thick but pourable, like a heavy pancake batter.
- SaleratusRead it as baking soda, one teaspoon. It needs the acid in the molasses to work, so use a full-flavoured unsulphured molasses rather than a light syrup, and do not substitute honey or maple.
- Indian mealCornmeal. Stone-ground medium or fine yellow meal gives the right slight grit; degerminated fine meal makes a smoother, blander loaf.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured whole milk, as opposed to the buttermilk or clabber a period cook might otherwise have reached for.
- The vesselA pudding mould, coffee can or straight-sided tin of at least 1.5 to 2 quarts, greased and filled no more than two-thirds; the quantities here make about a quart of batter before rising. Cover tightly with foil or a lid so condensation cannot drip in; the batter rises appreciably in the mould.
- How to steamStand the mould on a rack in a deep pot, add boiling water to come halfway up the sides, cover, and keep the water at a bare simmer. Check the level once an hour and top up with boiling water.
- Three hours is not paddingLong moist heat is what cooks this dense batter through and gives brown bread its damp crumb. Cutting it short can leave the centre raw and gritty. A skewer should come out clean and the loaf feel springy.
- The final bakeUncover the loaf and put it in a moderate oven (around 350F is a reasonable modern reading; the recipe specifies no temperature) for 20 to 30 minutes to dry the surface. 'Half an hour or more' is elastic: watch it rather than trusting the clock.
- Mixing"Mix with a spoon" is an instruction, not an aside. Stir only until combined; the soda begins working immediately, so get the batter into the mould and over heat without delay.
- YieldOne loaf, about 10 to 12 slices. Best served warm the day it is made, with butter; it slices more cleanly the next day and reheats well in the steamer.
Steamed brown bread belongs to the New England habit of cooking in a covered pot rather than an oven. The mixture of cornmeal with rye or graham flour reflects a grain economy in which wheat was costly and maize and rye were what the farm produced, while molasses came cheaply through the West Indies trade and served both as sweetener and as the acid that activated the cook's saleratus. Recipes of this type are common in nineteenth-century American community cookbooks, where contributions are typically credited to a named contributor as here, and the loaf's association with Saturday-night baked beans kept it in use well into the twentieth century.