Corn Bread
Various formulas and methods are used for making corn bread. The type of corn bread made in the Southern States varies considerably from that made in the Northern States. Following are formulas for both kinds of bread.
Formula for Southern Corn Bread White corn meal, 50 lbs.
Water (hot), 50 lbs.
Water (cold), 29 lbs.
Lard, 8¼ lbs.
Eggs, 2½ qts.
Milk powder, 4¾ lbs.
Salt, 3/4 lb.
Baking powder, 1½ lbs.
Method Put 50 lbs. of the white corn meal in a mixer and begin mixing. Then pour in 50 lbs. of hot water and 8¼ lbs. of lard and mix until a smooth mass is obtained. After this mass has been allowed to cool, add 4¾ lbs. of powdered milk, 29 lbs. of cold water, the salt, eggs and baking powder and mix to a medium soft batter. This mixture is now ready to be put into forms. If sour milk is desired in this corn bread you may omit the milk powder and the baking powder and use in their place 33½ lbs. of sour milk and ¾ lb. bicarbonate soda. The method for mixing is the same as employed above. Formula for Northern Corn Bread Flour (wheat), 31¼ lbs.
Corn meal (white), 183/4 lbs.
Sugar (brown), 1¾ lbs.
Lard, 1¾ lbs.
Salt, 3 lbs.
Eggs, 2½ lbs.
Milk, 371/2 qts.
Baking powder, 1½ lbs.
Method Scald the corn meal with 18¾ lbs. of hot milk and then add the shortening and mix thoroughly to incorporate the ingredients. When this mush has cooled, put 18¾ qts. of cold milk, the salt, eggs and flour in the mixer and mix to a smooth dough, then add the corn meal mush and baking powder and mix to a smooth batter. This mixture is now ready to be placed in forms.
This is a commercial bakeshop formula, written for a mechanical mixer and a batch of well over a hundred pounds. Scaling it to a home pan is straightforward arithmetic, but several of the printed quantities carry fractions that are no longer legible and have to be judged against the rest of the formula.
- Batch sizeThe Southern formula starts from 50 lbs of meal, and the listed ingredients total roughly 150 lbs of batter. Dividing every weight by 50 gives a single generous pan; work in weights rather than cups, since the formula is built entirely on them.
- Uncertain fractionsThe lard, milk powder, sour milk and soda figures in the Southern formula, and the flour, cornmeal, sugar, lard and milk figures in the Northern one, are printed with broken fractions. Read them proportionally against the meal: the lard most plausibly 8¾ lbs and the milk powder 4¾ lbs, not 874 or 434 lbs. Do not take any of those numbers at face value.
- SaltThree pounds of salt against the roughly fifty pounds of flour and meal in the Northern formula is high by modern practice, where around 2 percent of total flour weight is the usual ceiling; the figure may itself be a misprint.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Corn bread of this style wants a hot oven, roughly 400 to 425F, for 25 to 35 minutes in a sheet or loaf form; the batter is soft enough that a slower oven risks leaving it gummy in the centre.
- Forms"Forms" means the greased pans or sheet frames the batter is poured into, not moulds in the pastry sense. Get them hot before the batter goes in if you want a crust on the bottom.
- Scalding the mealBoth formulas scald the cornmeal, the Southern one with water and the Northern with hot milk. This is the hinge of the method: it gelatinises the starch and hydrates the meal so the finished crumb is moist rather than gritty. The mush must be cooled before eggs and baking powder go in, or the eggs will set and the leavening will exhaust itself early.
- Milk powderPowdered whole or skim milk was standard in bakeshops because it kept without refrigeration. Reconstitute at about 1 part powder to 9 parts of the cold water called for, or simply replace powder and cold water with the equivalent weight of fluid milk.
- Sour milk variantThe alternative swaps chemical baking powder for cultured milk plus bicarbonate of soda. Cultured buttermilk is the modern equivalent; ordinary milk soured on the counter is not, and should not be used.
- LardLard gives a short, slightly savoury crumb. Butter or a neutral shortening substitutes by weight, though butter's water content will make the batter marginally slacker.
The distinction this entry draws is a real one and still holds: Southern corn bread is built on cornmeal with little or no wheat flour and almost no sugar, while the Northern version cuts the meal with a larger proportion of wheat flour and sweetens it, here with brown sugar. The Southern formula's use of egg, milk and a chemical leavener places it in the spoonbread-to-skillet-bread family rather than with the plain water-and-meal pones of earlier generations. That a trade journal for commercial bakers printed both side by side is itself informative.