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Graham Baking Powder Nut Bread
3 cups graham flour 1 cup white flour cup sugar 1 teaspoon salt 4 teaspoons baking powder 2 cups milk 1 egg 1 cup nut meats Mix and sift dry ingredients; add milk, well-beaten egg and nut meats. Mix thoroughly, put into greased bread pan, let stand 25 minutes in a warm place. Bake about 50 minutes at 350°F. or until done.
A plain chemically leavened loaf of the kind that filled bread boxes between the wars. It mixes like a muffin batter and rewards a light hand.
- The sugar quantityThe ingredient line reads only "cup sugar" with no fraction attached, almost certainly a fraction lost in transcription. Treat the amount as ambiguous rather than assuming a full cup, which would make the loaf noticeably sweet and dark; a half cup is a safe reading.
- Graham flourGraham flour is coarsely ground whole wheat including the bran and germ, named for Sylvester Graham. Modern stone-ground whole wheat is the closest substitute; ordinary fine whole-wheat flour works but gives a smoother crumb.
- Mix as little as possibleThis is a batter bread, not a kneaded one. The recipe says "mix thoroughly," which for a quick-bread batter is better read as combining evenly than as beating hard: over-beating develops gluten and can give a tough loaf with tunnels.
- The 25-minute restThere is no yeast here, so the standing time is not a rise. It lets the bran hydrate and the crumb soften. The baking powder will still have plenty of lift left, but do not extend the rest much beyond half an hour.
- Pan and ovenUse a standard 9x5-inch loaf pan, greased and preferably lined on the bottom. The stated 350F is correct for a whole-grain quick bread; the loaf is done when a skewer in the centre comes out clean and the internal temperature reaches about 200F.
- Nut meats"Nut meats" simply means shelled nuts. Walnuts or pecans were usual. Chop them coarsely and toast them first if you want the flavour to carry against the graham flour.
- Yield and keepingOne loaf, about twelve slices. Quick breads of this type slice far better the day after baking; cool completely, wrap, and leave overnight before cutting.
Graham flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the 1830s temperance preacher and dietary reformer who argued that unbolted wheat meal was morally as well as physically superior to fine white flour. By the time this book was compiled his crusade had faded but his flour had not, and it turns up throughout early twentieth-century American cookbooks in gems, muffins and loaves like this one. Baking powder nut breads suited the period's plain, single-bowl style of home baking: no yeast, no kneading, no waiting on a sponge. They appear frequently in tea-table and lunch-box contexts.