Homemade Soft Graham Artisan Bread
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A vintage recipe for homemade soft graham artisan bread made with a blend of whole grain flours and a few simple ingredients. This graham flour bread is simple to make. No yeast required.
I came across a newspaper clipping from the early 1900’s tucked neatly in the pages of my great-grandmother’s “Table, Home and Health” cookbook. It was for several different bread recipes. They all sounded good, but the Soft Graham Bread caught my eye.
The ingredients for this old-fashioned artisan bread are simple, and I love graham flour. It was widely used back in the early 1900’s for many different recipes. It was one of the main flours milled back in that time period. This particular recipe was submitted by Mrs. H.H. Griffith, Jr. in this cookbook.
Here is a picture of the original vintage recipe.
Most of the recipes that I’ve made from this cookbook, I’ve had to guess the cooking temperature. A lot of these old recipes don’t have one. I usually went with a moderate 350 degrees and worked from there, since it’s a common baking temperature.
Recipe tips
No oil is used in this quick bread recipe, yet it still yields a lightly sweetened whole-grain bread with a beautiful texture. The fat comes from the milk used to make the bread. If you don’t have buttermilk on hand, you can use milk (2% or whole) with 1 tbsp vinegar per cup of milk.
Let it sit for 5 minutes, and you have a wonderful buttermilk substitute. I don’t recommend using anything lower than 2% milk fat in this recipe. Whole milk and regular buttermilk will work best for moisture. The whole family loved this bread, including my kids. It’s simple and delicious.
I used an organic graham flour from Hodgson Mill and King Arthur unbleached white whole wheat flour. If you can’t find graham flour, for every cup of flour, use 1/4 cup of wheat germ mixed with 3/4 cup of whole wheat flour. I also love using unbleached bread flour for the remaining cup of wheat flour in this recipe. It rises beautifully.
Ingredients you’ll need
- Egg
- Sugar- I recommend granulated cane sugar (I used Whey Low granular)
- Buttermilk- or 2 ½ cups milk (use at least 2% ) with 2 ½ tbsp vinegar dissolved in milk for 5 minutes
- Baking soda
- Salt- just a pinch of salt is needed
- Whole wheat graham flour
- Whole wheat flour- unbleached bread flour works great here, too
Homemade Graham Bread Steps
Step 1. Blend egg and sugar. Mix flours, baking soda and salt with a whisk until blended. Add the flour mixture to the sugar mixture.
Step 2. Alternate with buttermilk until all ingredients are added to the mixer.
Step 3. Mix until just combined. Pour into two greased loaf pans and bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Butter the tops of the bread and cool.
Slice and serve with your favorite butter spread. This bread is delicious toasted with a little jam on top.
If you love bread from scratch, you’ll love making your own yeast starter sponge!
Nutrition Info For This Graham Bread Recipe
The nutrition for this recipe is calculated using 3 cups of whole-wheat graham flour and 1 cup of unbleached bread flour. I also used Marburger Dairy Farms’ gourmet buttermilk. One serving is 2 slices, and each loaf of bread yields 16 slices. This recipe makes 2 loaves of bread. I usually keep one out to eat right away and wrap and freeze the second loaf for later. This bread freezes beautifully, and I recommend pre-slicing it before wrapping and freezing it in an airtight container or Ziploc bag.
If you love this graham flour bread recipe, definitely give this Cinnamon Raisin Sponge Cake recipe a try!
If you love this graham bread recipe, I would be so grateful if you could leave a 5-star 🌟 rating in the recipe card below. I love reading your comments and feedback!
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Homemade Soft Graham Artisan Bread
Ingredients
- 1 egg
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 1/2 cups buttermilk *or 2 1/2 cups whole milk with 2 1/2 tbsp vinegar
- 2 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 3 cups whole-wheat graham flour
- 1 cup whole wheat flour *or unbleached bread flour
Instructions
- Blend egg and sugar.
- Mix flour, baking soda and salt with a whisk until blended.
- Add flour mixture to sugar mixture and alternate with buttermilk until everything is added to the mixer.
- Mix until just combined.
- Pour into two greased loaf pans and bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
- Butter tops of bread and cool.
Nutrition
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I was reading Robert Vaughans book “On The Oregon Trail” and one of the ladies made graham buns. I was curious if Penrest would have the recipe and sure enough yours popped up! Will give it a try. Thanks
Hi Brenda! I’ll have to check out that book! I hope that you enjoy the recipe. I would love your feedback when you make it! I love the flavor and texture of this loaf.
Excellent bread! Thank you so much for sharing. I accidentally bought like 20 lbs of graham flour. I’ve kept it in my freezer. Well tonight I googled recipes for it and came across your! Excellent. I will be making this for years to come. Already have it in my recipe book. The taste is fantastic. Almost like a cornbread!
Hi Darleen! I’m so glad that you enjoyed the recipe! It’s one of my favorites, too. Happy Holidays! 🙂
Beth, I LOVE your additions and great ideas!!! Keep them coming, please. Feedback is wonderful. I love getting comments on my recipes:) Thank you for taking the time to post!
Yet another update (I think I need the honorary title of ‘Reporter in the Field’! haha): I made several loaves for a church fundraiser, and modified the recipe a bit. I added maybe a teaspoon or two of cinnamon, and a couple pinches of freshly grated nutmeg. Then, I took a cup of raisins and tossed them in some flour to coat; this is important because the batter is on the loose side, and it will help keep the raisins from sinking to the bottom. Fold the raisins in GENTLY before pouring into your loaf pans, and just follow the rest of the directions from there. 🙂
Beth, I just noticed that I had a boo-boo in my post! I had “cream butter and sugar” and it was meant to be “cream egg and sugar”. I guess you figured that out. Sorry. I just revised my recipe, so now it is correct. Oops! 🙂
A very nice loaf of bread. Isn’t that cool that you found the old clipping with the recipe.
Thank you for the tip on making a graham flour substitute, Beth. I can’t wait to hear how it turns out:)
Aargh. So I’ve been searching for days and none of the grocery stores around here sell graham flour – not even Publix or Bloom. I am too lazy to drive an hour & a half round trip to go to Earth Fare or Whole Foods, so I did a Google search and found out you can make up your own graham flour using this ratio:
2/3 cup white flour
scant 1/3 cup wheat bran
1 1/2 teaspoons wheat germ
Now *that* I can handle. 🙂
I’ll keep you posted on how it turns out!
Great recipe!
Amee, I love the fact that this recipe doesn’t call for yeast. (I’m still a little intimidated by it; I’m afraid my water won’t be the right temperature, and who has time to wait for bread to rise?Can’t wait to try this out next week when we have friends visiting. 🙂
Beth, I totally agree! Yeast bread is time consuming and this quick bread is so simple. Let me know what you think when you make it:)