Rye Bread
One pint rye meal, one pint Indian meal, one cup molasses, one teaspoonful saleratus, one teaspoonful salt, two cupfuls of sour milk. Mix the rye, Indian, salt and saleratus together (soda may be used in place of saleratus); put in the molasses and mix with the milk. Steam four hours.
This is a steamed brown bread rather than an oven loaf, and the method matters more than the measurements: it cooks in moist heat inside a covered mold, never in dry oven heat.
- The hinge: cover the moldGrease a 1- to 2-quart pudding mold or two 1-lb coffee tins, fill no more than two-thirds, and cover tightly with a lid or foil tied down. If steam condenses onto the batter the top turns to paste. Set the mold on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water reaching halfway up, and keep it at a steady low boil, topping up with more boiling water as it evaporates.
- Rye meal and Indian mealRye meal is coarse whole rye, closer to rye flour than to cracked rye; ordinary dark rye flour works. Indian meal is cornmeal, and a medium-grind yellow or white stoneground meal gives the right texture.
- SaleratusUse baking soda, one level teaspoon. Early saleratus was potassium bicarbonate, slightly weaker by volume, though by the time this recipe was printed the name was often used for sodium bicarbonate too -- which is why the recipe allows soda in its place. At this scale the difference is not worth adjusting for.
- Sour milkTwo cups of buttermilk is the direct substitute. Pasteurised milk sours less predictably than the raw milk this recipe assumes, so clabbering it on the counter is not reliable; if you have no buttermilk, use plain milk with two tablespoons of lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left five minutes. The acid is what activates the soda, so it cannot be skipped.
- MolassesUnsulphured dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is harsh and bitter in this quantity. One cup is a full measure and the loaf will be dark and distinctly sweet.
- Batter consistencyThis is a pourable, thick batter rather than a kneaded dough. It should drop heavily from the spoon; add a splash more buttermilk if the meals absorb everything and it stiffens to a paste.
- Timing and donenessFour hours is the recipe's own figure and suits a single large mold; smaller tins will be done sooner, so test rather than trust a set time. A skewer to the centre should come out clean and the loaf should pull slightly from the sides.
- Yield and servingOne large loaf. Turn it out while hot, let it stand a few minutes so the surface steam dries, and serve warm in thick slices with butter, or alongside baked beans and salt pork in the New England fashion.
Steamed loaves of rye and cornmeal sweetened with molasses were a New England staple long before this book was printed, and the combination gave the style its common names: rye and Indian bread, or simply brown bread. The pairing was a matter of economy and geography — wheat did not thrive in much of the northeast, while rye and maize did, and molasses arrived cheaply through the coastal trade that also supplied the region's rum distilleries. Steaming rather than baking suited a household with a pot already on the stove, and the loaf is traditionally associated with baked beans as a Saturday-night dish. That the recipe still calls for saleratus while parenthetically allowing soda shows a dish carried over from an older kitchen into a period when the terms themselves were changing.