Early American Brown Bread

7/14/2004 meps Quick Breads 3

From Barry’s first cookbook: Where’s Mom Now That I Need Her

2C whole wheat flour
3/4 C white flour
1C brown sugar, packed
2t baking soda
1/2 t salt
2t cinnamon
2C milk
4t lemon juice or vinegar

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. Combine milk with lemon juice or vinegar, let stand 10 minutes. Stir this mixture gradually into flour mixture until blended. Spoon into greased loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees for an hour.

This is a rather unsophisticated and uncomplicated version of brown bread. For a wonderful authentic steamed recipe, try Boston Brown Bread. It’s a lot more work, but the results are out of this world.

3 Comments

  1. My wife in a former marriage used to make this “early american brown bread, but I believe she used molasas in it. I could be completely off, but does this sound familier?

  2. The cookbook I copied this from was a very basic one, and I don’t think they expected their users to have “exotic” ingredients like molasses.

    You could probably use half molasses and half brown sugar, but you’d want to decrease the milk an equal amount, to keep the batter from being too runny.

    I always mistype the word molasses. That’s because my crazy brother-in-law, Ed, always says it with a southern drawl: Mole-asses, as if it came from a poor hapless mole.

  3. I would like the recipe for a bread that I knew as HOBO
    bread. It was very dark like molasses was used in it, and
    I think it had dates or raisons in it. It was baked in a can.
    can. Thanks

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