Whole wheat flour
Yeast
Water
1 tbs. brown sugar

The sample of Graham bread presented was made of spring wheat flour. The sponge was set at night with yeast and water, with a table-spoonful of brown sugar added. Mixed next morning and put in a baking dish, and when sufficiently light [raised], baked about an hour in a stove oven. No salt used.

From Transactions of the Wisconsin State Agriculture Society, blue ribbon winners at the Wisconsin State Fair of 1860. Item entered by Mrs. S. Warner.

Comment: We have had questions about the direction to “set the sponge” the night before. This technique is nowadays confined almost exclusively to sourdough bread, but was an almost universal practice in the days before dehydrated yeast was on the market. All baking yeast was previously kept in a jar mixed with flour and water, almost a mini-dough in itself. The amount needed for a specific baking would be taken out, mixed with additional flour and water (and perhaps, as here, some sugar or other stimulant to yeast growth) and left for hours or overnight to allow the yeast to multiply. Then when it was time to actually bake, any remaining flour, water and other ingredients called for would be added to the “sponge” and the process repeated during the rising of the dough. This recipe does not call for any additional ingredients so the overnight rising would evidently be the only one except for the rising in the pan. We suggest you bake at 350 degrees F for half an hour or so until the top looks brown. Bake in a bread pan of some oven-safe sort, not on a flat baking sheet.

There are historic recipes to be found in the oddest places. Those collected from family lore, notes scribbled on stray bits of paper in Grandma’s receipt box or, as in this case, from records of a State Fair, tend to consist almost entirely of a list of ingredients. The user was expected to know what to do with them from that point on. The cooking stove was in the process of being invented in this period–previously cooking had been done on an open fire in a hearth, which doubled as the heat source for the house–and every one was different, so cooking directions would not have been of much use anyway. “Graham flour” was what would today be known as whole wheat.