This month's recipe is a work in progress! Like the Cranberry Pudding from last month the transition from old to new did not go smoothly. Unfortunately I have gotten the quantity and quality of the yeast in a sponge based bread quite right. But in any case, upon the discovery of having a recipe similar to Dr. Sylvester Graham's bread, aka the original graham cracker, I received a personal request to have the recipe made. Must love roomies. :) Therefore, I present to you "Brown or Dyspepsia Bread" from Sarah Josepha Hale's The Good Housekeeper.
This bread is now best known as "Graham bread"— not that Doctor Graham invented or discovered the manner of its preparation, but that he has been unwearied and successful in recommending it in public. It is an excellent article of diet for the dyspeptic and the costive; and for most persons of sedentary habits, would be beneficial. It agrees well with children; and, in short, I think it should be used in every family, though not to the exclusion of fine bread. The most difficult point in manufacturing this bread is to obtain good pure meal. It is said that much of the bread commonly sold as dyspepsia, is made of the bran or middlings, from which the fine flour has been separated; and that saw-dust is sometimes mixed with the meal. To be certain that it is good, send good, clean wheat to the mill, have it ground rather coarsely, and keep the meal in a dry, cool place. Before using it, sift it through a common hair sieve; this will separate the coarse and harsh particles.
Take six quarts of this wheat meal, one tea-cup of good yeast, and half a tea-cup of molasses, mix these with a pint of milk-warm water and a tea-spoonful of pearlash or salæratus. Make a hole in the flour, and stir this mixture in the middle of the meal until it is like batter. Then proceed as with fine flour bread. make the dough when sufficiently light into four loaves, which will weigh two pounds per loaf when baked. It requires a hotter oven than fine flour bread, and must bake about an hour and a half.
Obviously this recipe is not a "cracker," but rather a whole wheat bread made from a sponge. Gotta love that word, sponge, but the result does resemble the holy entity found at the bottom of the sea. It involves mixing the batter as stated above and letting this rise until it cracks the layer of flour sprinkled over the top. Once it has risen, the rest of the flour is kneaded in with enough water to make a stiff smooth dough and set to rise again. After the second rising the dough is to be made into loaves and immediately baked.
One of the first orders of business with this recipe was discovering the exact contents of pearlash and or salæratus. To my understanding pearlash is potassium carbonate, which today is rarely used in cooking. Salæratus on the other hand is your everday, common sodium bicarbonate, found in most every kitchen, known as baking soda.
Secondly, this recipe is huge, it makes four two pound loaves of bread, so I cut the ingredients into quarters so that I would end up with only one loaf of bread. Even still the first time I made it, the sponge didn't set quite right and I ended up with an incredibly heavy bread. Don't get me wrong, it tasted great and had a fabulous crust, but it might as well have been a brick it was so heavy. It almost reminds me of the first time I ever made bread, now that was a flat loaf. I am undecided how I want to try to leaven the bread next time, whether I want to save the dregs of my roomie's beer or just add yeast as I would normally. Decisions, decisions...
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