"So many recipes, so little time!"

When you have literally hundreds of heirloom recipes, and there are only a few minutes in a day in which to look through the pile, you might miss something!  Well, this is the case here, with this recipe.  At some point I'd like to be able to organized all these recipes.  I don't see that happening any time soon, but it is one of those things you put on a "To Do" list.

As a result of not having them organized or categorized, I'm not always sure what the recipe makes! So many times I've come across something that was written a century or more ago, and it has a list of ingredients but no directions.  Others, like this one, have no name!  So where do I go from there? Well, in most cases, with recipes like that, they get put aside for further investigation at some time in the future.  If I'm on a quest to find a certain recipe or type of dish, I end up sorting through half of them each time!

I've been looking for a recipe which was mentioned in Laura's book, "Farmer Boy".  In the book it is called, "Rye 'n' Injun Bread".  Well, I figured it should be in my heirloom recipes somewhere.  But I haven't come across it yet.  Then, the other day, I happened to look at one of those, which was probably written down by my great grandmother, over a century ago.  It didn't have a recipe name, but as I looked at the list of ingredients, most of them are those associated with "Rye 'n' Injun Bread".  I say, "most" because there are some extra ingredients, like all-purpose flour, raisins, currents and chopped nuts.  So, I scratched my head in wonder.  But then it dawned on me - this was probably an altered "Rye 'n' Injun Bread" recipe.  Barbara M. Walker, in her "Little House Cookbook" talks about how the recipe changed over the years. And it probably changed from one locale to another as well.  My great grandmother had her roots in the Germanic settlements of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The only way I'd know for sure what I had in my hand was to make it.  Then, as I looked more at this old, handwritten recipe, I noticed that some of the directions didn't quite make sense. (Some of these recipes are written in "Broken English" - a cross between German and English.) So I had to spend some time, using my culinary knowledge, to figure out how I could make this recipe.
This is what I came up with:

Farmer Boy Rye 'n' Injun Brown Bread

Ingredients:

• 1 Cup of all-purpose flour
• 1 Cup of Rye flour
• 1 Cup of yellow cornmeal
• 2 teaspoons of baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1 Cup of buttermilk
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 Cup of molasses
• 3/4 Cup of raisins
• 1/2 Cup of currents (optional)
• 1/2 Cup of Pecans, roughly chopped

Directions: In a large bowl, combine the cornmeal, flours, salt and baking soda.  Stir into this, the buttermilk, eggs and molasses.  When this is thoroughly mixed, stir in the raisins and pecans.  Pour this mixture into a greased loaf pan.  Bake in a pre-heated oven, at 300 degrees F. for about 1 1/2 hours. (Test with a probe.)  My recipe called for the use of a water bath in the oven, but I think you'd do best to avoid too much moisture when baking it.   I took the bath out after an hour, and it seemed just right!  It won't rise like most sweet breads, and might seem dry to you if you aren't familiar with "Brown Breads".

This is not the "definitive" Brown Bread recipe, but it is one that my family passed down for over a century.  I can only vaguely remember having it as a child; but I do remember having a store-bought "Brown Bread" that came in a can.  If my memory is working good, this recipe tastes better than the canned one!  My recipe called for "a slow oven", which might have been about 200 degrees and baking time was hours long!  But I don't think it would be completely safe to do it that long at such a low temperature, because of the eggs. (But maybe I'm wrong!)  I hope you'll try this recipe, if for no other reason, to have something like Almanzo ate as a boy!  If you make it, please come back here and leave a comment.  Thanks.  The Old Man in the Bib Overalls