Homemade Soft Graham Artisan Bread

A vintage recipe for homemade soft graham artisan bread made with a blend of whole grain flours and a few simple ingredients. 
homemade soft graham artisan bread made with a blend of whole grain flours and a few simple ingredients

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 from Mrs. H.H. Griffith, Jr. in this cookbook.

Here is a picture of the original vintage recipe.

Vintage soft graham bread recipe
Most of the recipes that I’ve made from this cookbook I’ve had to guess at a 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.
 
No oil is used in this recipe and it still resulted in 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 fat than 2% milk in this recipe. Whole milk and regular buttermilk will work best for moisture. The whole family loved this bread, including my kids. Simple and delicious.

How To Make Soft Graham Artisan Bread

Ingredients You’ll Need:

1 egg
1 cup natural cane sugar (I used whey low granular)
2 ½ cups of buttermilk or 2 ½ cups milk (use at least 2% ) with 2 ½ tbsp vinegar dissolved in milk for 5 minutes
2 ½ tsp baking soda 
Pinch of sea salt
3 cups whole wheat graham flour
1 cup whole wheat flour (or unbleached bread flour works great here too)

Directions:
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.
 
 
Blend egg and sugar. Mix flours, baking soda and salt with a whisk until blended. Add flour mixture to sugar mixture.
Adding flour to soft graham artisan bread recipe
Alternate with buttermilk until everything is added to the mixer. 
Adding buttermilk to soft artisan graham bread
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. 
Soft artisan graham bread fresh from the oven
Butter tops of bread and cool.
Fresh butter melted on top of soft graham artisan bread

Slice and Serve with your favorite butter spread.

soft graham bread sliced on a cutting board

If you love bread from scratch, you’ll love making your own yeast starter sponge!

Soft graham artisan bread with butter and jam

This bread is also delicious toasted with a little jam on top. 

Delicious soft graham bread sliced and toasted with butter and jam

Nutrition Info For This Graham Bread Recipe

The nutrition for this recipe is figured out using 3 cups of whole wheat graham flour with 1 cup unbleached bread flour. I also used Marburger Dairy Farms gourmet buttermilk. One serving is 2 slices and you get 16 slices per loaf of bread. 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 in an airtight container or Ziploc bag.

If you love this vintage bread recipe, definitely give this Cinnamon Raisin Sponge Cake recipe a try!

 

Soft graham artisan bread recipe

Homemade Soft Graham Artisan Bread

A vintage recipe for homemade soft graham artisan bread made with a blend of whole grain flours and a few simple ingredients.ย 
4.41 from 5 votes
Print Pin Rate
Course: Bread
Cuisine: American
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 45 minutes
Total Time: 50 minutes
Servings: 16 *2 slices each serving
Calories: 184kcal
Author: Amee

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.ย 
  • 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.ย 
  • 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

Serving: 1g | Calories: 184kcal | Carbohydrates: 38g | Protein: 5g | Fat: 2g
Tried this recipe?Mention @ameecooks or tag #ameecooks!
Amee Livingston
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11 Comments

  1. 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:)

  2. 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. ๐Ÿ™‚

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  4. 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. ๐Ÿ™‚

    I’ll keep you posted on how it turns out!

  5. A very nice looking loaf of bread. Isn’t that cool that you found the old clipping with the recipe.

  6. 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! ๐Ÿ™‚

  7. 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. ๐Ÿ™‚

  8. 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!

  9. 5 stars
    Excellent bread! Thank you so much for sharing. I accidentally bought like 20 lbs of graham flour. Iโ€™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!

4.41 from 5 votes (4 ratings without comment)

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