Graham Bread (one loaf) Recipe
1 pound Graham flour that is a real wheat meal
1 cup lukewarm water
1 cake compressed yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons molasses
3 tablespoons cooking oil
Sift the flour to make it light and break up the lumps. Do not throw away the bran. This bread is to contain all the wheat, including the bran and germ of the wheat. Look over the bran that remains in the sifter to be sure that there is nothing in it that should not go into the bread. Then mix the bran with the flour that has been sifted. Crumble the yeast cake into the lukewarm water, and stir till it is completely dissolved. Then stir in the salt, molasses, and oil. Turn this mixture into the flour, and stir it to a dough with a spoon. It should be too soft to knead. Cover it tightly with a tin cover or several thicknesses of cloth. Set it in a warm place to rise till a hole will sink in the dough when it is struck with the backs of the fingers. Then take the dough out on a floured board, and mold it into a hard roll, according to the instructions given in the directions for making white bread. Place the roll in an oiled bread tin and set it in a warm place to rise, covered with cloth. When the top of the loaf is a little below the top of the pan, it is ready to put into the oven. The oven should not be quite so hot for baking this bread as for baking white bread, because this bread is more likely to scorch on account of the molasses it contains.
To make this bread without molasses use the following recipe:
1 pound Graham flour that is real wheat meal
1 cup and 2 tablespoons lukewarm water
1 cake compressed yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons cooking oil
3 teaspoons sugar
If ordinary Graham flour must be used in making Graham bread, follow the recipe for making white bread, using one-half pound white flour and one-half pound Graham flour; or a smaller proportion of Graham is sometimes used. Sift the Graham flour, but do not throw away the bran; use the bran in the bread.
In making a larger quantity of bread, it is not necessary to use an equally large proportion of yeast. One yeast cake may be used with three or four times the amount given in these recipes, but it will take longer to make the bread.
If it is desired that the bread should be lighter, and in this respect more like baker's bread, when the dough has risen the first time punch it down in the middle, and fold in the sides so as to make a hard ball. Turn the dough over, and allow it to rise a second time. When it has risen the second time, mold it into loaves.
