Author Notes: I have lots of cookbooks. I have a whole tote full of church and community cookbooks and while I wouldn’t cook a lot of the recipes they are still interesting, inspiring and unique to for their glimpse of the year of food in which the books where created. One of my all time favorites is a book from a now non-existant town in Missouri named Pennytown. It was an African American town that at some point was no more. The residents still stayed in touch and many years later created a cookbook in memory of what once was. I was fortunate enough to take a picture of the ladies who created the book and the newspaper did a story as well. As a result I gave the ladies a copy of their picture and in return they gave me a cookbook. This brown bread was created after a recipe in my mothers hometown church and their fundraiser cookbook. —thirschfeld
Makes: 8 slices each about 3/4 inch thick
Ingredients
-
1/2
cup whole wheat pastry flour, 2.3 oz.
-
1/2
cup whole wheat flour, 2.3 oz
-
1/2
cup fine grind corn meal, 3 oz.
-
1/2
teaspoon baking powder
-
1/2
teaspoon baking soda
-
1/2
teaspoon kosher salt
-
3
ounces unsulfered molasses
-
1
cup buttermilk
-
1/2
cup raisins
-
undalted butter for greasing cans
-
salted pasture butter for serving
Directions
- Grab a pot large enough to hold the soup cans and tall enough to get the lid on it and that will allow you to put a rack on the bottom so the soup cans don’t rest on the bottom of the pot.
- Heavily grease the inside of your soup cans or whatever you’ve decided to use.
- In a mixing bowl, with the exception of the raisins, combine all the dry ingredients and mix them well. Now combine the buttermilk and the molasses. Mix everything till smooth and then stir in the raisins.
- Use a spatula to fill the cans with the batter and fill the buttered cans no more than 2/3 full. Cover the tops of the cans tightly with aluminum foil and place them into the pot with the rack on the bottom. Fill the pot with hot water until it comes half way up the side of the soup cans.
- Place the pot onto the heat and bring the water to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer then cover the pot with a lid and set a timer for 1 hour.
/a7729c3f-7cd0-4985-9457-415019a9e1d7--steamed_brown_bread_two.jpg "Steamed Brown Bread 2")
