Graham flour is pretty interesting stuff. Marilyn Hall in Oakfield wrote to ask about it because she found a lot of muffin recipes calling for graham flour. She had hunted all over for it, even in nearby Canada, and was beginning to think it didn’t exist anymore.

Well, it is still around, but often by a different name. For example, Estelle Chipman of Birch Harbor went hunting for it at Hannaford’s in Ellsworth. She wrote, “No one knew what I was talking about. As I was talking to one of the clerks, an older man came by on his way to leave for home, and asked if he could help? I told him what I wanted. He took me to it directly in the Section of Dietary and Special Foods, on the bottom shelf.” What Estelle found was a Hodgson Mills brown paper bag with a picture of a mill on it, and the words “All Natural Stone Ground Whole Wheat Graham Flour.”

The operative words here are whole wheat, as Ruth Thurston discovered when she contacted New England’s own King Arthur Flour in Vermont. She called them up, toll free (800-827-6836) and “after some research they told me that on their computer the whole wheat flour was also called graham flour.”

Most people have heard about graham crackers. Some people may have even heard of Sylvester Graham, and some say that Sylvester invented graham crackers. Graham didn’t actually invent them, but did offer his followers a cracker recipe using graham flour and strongly promoted the use of whole wheat flour.

We have to back up a little to a time when there was no such thing as ‘unwhole wheat flour.’ Until the early 1800s, wheat was ground with its germ, hull and all, intact. It could be sifted and a white flour obtained, but it still had in it the oils from the germ and little bits of bran. The oil could become rancid which shortened the shelf life of the flour.

When millers figured out how to remove the germ and bran, a refined white flour with a long shelf life resulted. Sylvester Graham was convinced, and correctly, that this was a nutritiously inferior product but a lot of people really enjoyed the fine white flour and it dominated the market. Now Graham also campaigned for temperance; he believed that if the bread people ate was made with whole wheat flour (and if they followed the rest of his dietary advice) they would be much less likely to drink. He wrote and spoke about whole wheat flour, strongly advocating its use, so much so, it was named for him.

Many recipes in the middle 1800s through early 1900s called for whole wheat flour by the name graham. We find graham flour in steamed brown bread, in recipes for graham bread, that is, whole wheat bread, and many muffin recipes, too, and, of course, in crackers. I am here to tell you, that old Sylvester would be some upset if he met up with a modern graham cracker: he didn’t think sugar was good for you either, and he would be horrified about S’mores.

The Graham Rolls recipe that follows comes from Betty Mills in Dexter. Betty found this recipe in her Dexter-native grandmother Eula Towle’s collection after her death at age 90, and the recipe came originally from Eula’s mother, Nellie Levenseller. Betty says as far as she knows the recipe is at least 100 years old. Betty wrote, “When my grandmother made these, she used the original old-fashioned cast-iron muffin pans, with the oblong curved logs.” Some people called that pan a French roll pan. I like to make these in a couple of cast-iron muffin pans that I have, but they will work in any muffin tin.

These muffins are sweet and a gorgeous golden color. You know that in order to make sour milk all you have to do is dump a couple tablespoons of vinegar or lemon juice into your measuring cup of milk, right?

Graham Rolls

Yields about 12 muffins.

1 cup Graham or whole wheat flour

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup of sugar (scant)

1 cup sour milk

1 egg beaten

1 cup sour milk

2 tablespoons molasses

2 tablespoons melted butter

Preheat the oven to 425 F and grease your muffin tins. (If I use my cast iron pans, I always preheat them a little.) Sift together the dry ingredients and put into a medium bowl. Whisk together the wet ingredients and add to the dry, and mix them with a few swift strokes. Spoon into the muffin tin and put into the oven to bake for 12 to 15 minutes.

Looking for…

I am hearing from you about your favorite spices, but it occurred to me, I ought to rephrase the question a little, because, after all, we generally use one set of spices in our savory cooking, and a different set in the sweet. And then I was talking with a friend of mine this weekend who observed that she hasn’t had a spice cake in a long time. We surmised that chocolate cake may have pushed spice cake aside. I’d love a good spice cake recipe and wouldn’t it be good with orange icing?

Send queries or answers to Sandy Oliver, 1061 Main Road, Islesboro 04848. E-mail: tastebuds@prexar.com. For recipes, tell us where they came from. List ingredients, specify number of servings and do not abbreviate measurements. Include name, address and daytime phone number.