Boston Brown Bread Recipe?

[elston]

Steaming Brown Bread:

My mother put great stock in The Boston Cooking School Cook Book so I checked hers which was a reprint of the original from 1945. "fill well greased mold not more than 2/3 full. Cover closely and place mold on trivet in kettle containing boiling water, allowing water to come half way up around the mold. Cover closely and steam 3 1/2 hours, keeping water at boiling point. Add more boiling water as needed. IN steamed pudding molds, steam 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Take from water; remove cover and set in slow oven (300) to dry off. Remove from the mold. Cut with string while hot, by drawing string around bread, crossing, and pulling ends."

Brown bread recipes usually call for sour milk (in mollysmiles it calls for vinegar which would accomplish the same end...in the old days of ice boxes, we always had some sour milk or milk on the turn that needed to be used up.

Like Msina my mom used coffee cans (I don't think they make good strong metal coffee cans anymore--they seem more plasticy and cardboard???) She definately steamed them on top of the stove. I seem to remember waxed paper having something to do with it; and Dad cut it with the string. sometimes I recall hearing a 'damn damn damn muttered on the in-breath when it didnt cut as neatly as he wanted.

[msina]

To steam Brown Bread I use my canning pot, on the stove top. Hmmm... now You have me thinking of making it.

[elston]

Brown Bread (Mrs. Thomas Fitzgerald boasts that this is a Prize Recipe)

1 cup corn meal
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup graham flour or whole wheat flour
3/4 cup molasses
2 cups buttermilk or very thick sour milk

add cornmeal to sifted flour,salt,soda, and baking powder. Add graham flour without sifting. Add molasses and buttermilk and beat thoroughly. Fill a thoroughly greased coffee can a little more than half full. Cover tightly and steam for three hours. Don't remove cover or it will fall! Take cover off and set in oven for 5 minutes to dry.

[elston]

(that would be not to remove cover during the time it is steaming for the 3 hours)

[dmyankee]

Originally Posted by elston

Steaming Brown Bread:

My mother put great stock in The Boston Cooking School Cook Book so I checked hers which was a reprint of the original from 1945. "fill well greased mold not more than 2/3 full. Cover closely and place mold on trivet in kettle containing boiling water, allowing water to come half way up around the mold. Cover closely and steam 3 1/2 hours, keeping water at boiling point. Add more boiling water as needed. IN steamed pudding molds, steam 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Take from water; remove cover and set in slow oven (300) to dry off. Remove from the mold. Cut with string while hot, by drawing string around bread, crossing, and pulling ends."

Brown bread recipes usually call for sour milk (in mollysmiles it calls for vinegar which would accomplish the same end...in the old days of ice boxes, we always had some sour milk or milk on the turn that needed to be used up.

Like Msina my mom used coffee cans (I don't think they make good strong metal coffee cans anymore--they seem more plasticy and cardboard???) She definately steamed them on top of the stove. I seem to remember waxed paper having something to do with it; and Dad cut it with the string. sometimes I recall hearing a 'damn damn damn muttered on the in-breath when it didnt cut as neatly as he wanted.

Excellent recipe used by our families for generations. I have several copies going back to the original 1885? edition. Any of the early Fanny Farmers Boston Cooking School books is a keeper.

Everything to post roast and piping plover. The earlier versions employ the most modern techniques available, such as sticks of which type of hardwood to use for the recipe at hand in the cookstove.

They make great reading and provide an excellent perspective in domestic sociology. It always gives me a great appreciation for modern life.

[elston]

The author was an early Universalist lady who had a passion for accurate measurements of cooking! NO more "the size of a walnut or goose egg" she wanted scientific precision.

[elston]

I have a question about the kettles used for canning; are those beautiful copper and brass rectangular/oblong "canners" that you see holding magazines and firewood--were they really used for canning and might they have been used to steam puddings and brown bread???? Were they used for lobster bakes? Arent todays canners the blue flecked round enamel pots with the wire racks to hold the jars. Did the copper canners have inserts?????

[Moxie]

I vaguely remember the wax paper and a wet cloth or something with my Eastport great grandmother's brown bread. I miss her baked beans too. Havent' had them since 1968, but I still remember them.
I do have some of her recipes but they are all the old style of "slow oven, size of a walnut, thumb", etc. I have her Indian pudding recipe I'd love to figure out with modern cooking measurements and methods.