Graham Puffs
One pint of graham flour, one-half pint of milk, onehalf pint of water, two eggs, a little salt. Bake in cups or gem pans.
This is a popover batter made with graham flour rather than white, and it rises on steam alone othing in it leavens chemically. Everything depends on a very hot, well-greased pan and an oven you do not open.
- The measuresA pint is 2 cups, a half pint 1 cup. So: 2 cups graham flour, 1 cup milk, 1 cup water, 2 eggs, a pinch of salt a thin batter, closer to heavy cream than to muffin dough.
- Gem pansA gem pan is a heavy cast-iron muffin tin, usually with deep oval or round cups. Any cast-iron muffin pan or popover pan works; heat it empty in the oven and grease it generously just before filling, so the batter sets on contact.
- Oven heatThe book gives none. Treat it as a popover: 450F for the first 15 minutes to force the steam, then 350F for another 15–20 minutes to dry the interior. Do not open the door during the first stage.
- Graham flourCoarsely ground whole wheat flour, bran and germ included. Modern whole wheat flour is the closest substitute, though it is milled finer; the puffs may rise somewhat better than with true coarse graham, as coarse bran particles are generally thought to interfere with the gluten network that traps steam.
- Beat it properlyWhisk the eggs and liquid first, then add the flour and beat until smooth. Lumps and under-beaten batter are a common reason puffs stay flat. Letting the batter rest 20 minutes hydrates the bran and is generally held to improve the rise.
- Fill and serveFill the cups about two-thirds. Expect about a dozen from this quantity. They collapse within minutes of leaving the oven, so serve them straight from the pan with butter.
- No leavening is not an errorThere is no soda, baking powder or yeast in the recipe. If you add any, you get a whole wheat muffin instead of a hollow puff.
Graham flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the New England temperance preacher and diet reformer of the 1830s who argued that unsifted whole wheat, plainly cooked, was the proper food for a healthy body. By the end of the century his name had detached from his sermons and simply meant coarse whole wheat flour, sold in every grocery and worked into gems, muffins, puffs and bread in books like this one. Puffs and gems of this sort flour, milk, egg, no leavening, baked in blazing-hot iron cups are often said to have been a common breakfast bread, and the cast-iron gem pan was common enough kitchen equipment that a cookbook could name it without explanation.