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Boston Brown Bread
1 teaspoon salt tablespoon soda 2 cups sour milk cup molasses cup raisins, if desired Sift together dry ingredients. Mix well with sour milk and molasses. If mixture is too stiff, thin with a little water. If raisins are used, either add to dry mixture before liquid, or reserve a little flour, sift well over raisins and stir in last. Fill well-greased molds full of mixture and tie on the lids which also must be greased. Steam three hours or more, depending on size of molds used. Baking powder cans or other cans with lids can be used for molds.
Keep the water boiling all the time during the steaming. Add more boiling water if necessary.
Cover the kettle during the steaming, and be careful not to jar it while cooking.
A steamed quick bread leavened with soda and sour milk rather than yeast. The method matters more than precision here: constant boiling water, a sealed mold, and enough time for the batter to set all the way through.
- Sour milkThis means naturally soured raw milk, which is not the same as spoiled pasteurized milk. Use cultured buttermilk cup for cup; its acidity is what activates the soda.
- SodaPlain baking soda, not baking powder. It needs the acid in the buttermilk and the molasses, so do not substitute sweet milk without adding an acid.
- The floursThe flour quantities have dropped out of this ingredient list. Boston brown bread is commonly made with rye meal, cornmeal and graham (whole wheat) flour, often in roughly equal parts, though proportions vary from book to book. Any combination of coarse whole grains gives the dense, moist crumb; all-white flour does not.
- MolassesUse unsulphured dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and can make the loaf taste medicinal.
- Filling the moldsThe recipe says to fill the molds full; two-thirds is safer. The batter rises appreciably while steaming and a packed mold will force the lid or split the loaf.
- Improvised moldsOld baking powder cans had friction lids; modern cans do not. A 1-lb coffee can or a straight-sided pudding basin covered with greased foil and tied down with string works, as does a 6-cup pudding mold with a clip lid.
- The water levelWater should come halfway up the molds and must stay at a steady boil for the full time. Top up only with boiling water, and keep the kettle covered; a lull in the steam gives a gummy center.
- Timing and donenessThe recipe gives three hours or more, scaled to the size of the molds; smaller cans may set sooner, larger ones will need longer. A skewer pushed to the bottom should come out clean and the loaf should pull slightly from the sides.
- Yield and servingServing -- Yield depends on the flour quantity, which is missing from this ingredient list, and on the size of the cans used. Unmold while hot, cool a few minutes, then cut with a length of thread or a serrated knife rather than pressing down with a blade. Baked beans are the traditional companion; cream cheese is a later pairing.
Steaming rather than baking is often said to be the older New England habit, though rye-and-Indian breads were also commonly baked in brick ovens, and steaming is one method among several. The grain mix tells the same story: rye and cornmeal were what grew and ground cheaply in colonial New England, and molasses, arriving in quantity through Boston's West Indies trade, did the sweetening that refined sugar was too dear to do. By the time this book was compiled the loaf was commonly associated with Saturday-night baked beans, and it appears here among the batters and doughs as a quick bread rather than a yeast bread because soda and sour milk do all the lifting.