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The Bread of Our Forefathers
Put in a pan two quarts of meal, a half-pint of flour, stir up well; pour in the center a pint of boiling water, stir up enough of the meal to make a thin batter; when cool, put in a cup of yeast, a tea-spoon of salt and enough warm water to make a thick batter; let rise, then place in a deep, well-greased pan, cover with another pan, and place in a moderate oven. When nearly done, remove the cover, and bake slowly until done. Excellent when cold. All baking-pans for bread should be made with covers, made of the same material, and high enough to permit the bread to rise to its full size. If pan is deep enough to permit the bread to rise without touching it, a flat piece of tin or sheet-iron will answer for the cover, or a cover may be made of paper, or another pan may be inverted over the bread. The office of the cover is to prevent the crust from browning hard before the expansion of the gases has made the bread light and porous. - Mrs. C. V. Collier, Litchfield, Minnesota.
A yeast-raised cornmeal loaf baked under a cover, from the era when bread pans came with lids. The method is sound; the measurements assume a kitchen that kept its own liquid yeast.
- "Meal" means cornmealIn this book meal without qualification is Indian meal, i.e. cornmeal, and the half-pint of flour is wheat flour. Two quarts of cornmeal is roughly 7 to 8 cups, or about 2 1/2 lb; the half-pint of flour is 1 cup.
- The hinge: scald the meal properlyThe pint of boiling water poured into the center and stirred into part of the meal gelatinizes the starch, which helps keep a nearly gluten-free loaf moist rather than sandy. Stir it into a thin batter and, as the recipe says, let it cool before the yeast goes in -- much above lukewarm and the yeast suffers.
- A cup of yeastThis means a cup of homemade liquid yeast or barm, which is mostly water. Substitute about 2 teaspoons of instant dry yeast and count that cup as part of the warm water.
- Oven temperaturesA moderate oven is 350F; baking "slowly until done" after the cover comes off means around 300F. Expect a long bake for a loaf this size, and judge by an internal temperature of about 200F rather than by the clock.
- Why the coverThe note at the end explains it: the cover keeps the crust from browning hard before the expansion of the gases has made the loaf light and porous. A deep pan with a sheet of foil crimped loosely over it, or a second pan inverted, does the same job as the fitted tin lid -- the recipe itself offers tin, sheet-iron, paper or an inverted pan.
- Rising will be modestWith only 1 cup of wheat flour to 7 or 8 cups of cornmeal there is almost no gluten, so the dough thickens and puffs rather than doubling. Give it a warm spot and an hour or two, and do not wait for a conventional doubling.
- YieldEnough for one large loaf in a deep pan with clear headroom for the rise, or two standard loaf pans. The remark that it is "excellent when cold" fits cornmeal loaves, which firm up on standing and slice better the next day.
Yeast-raised cornmeal loaves like this one sit between the two great American bread traditions: the wheat loaves of the settled East and the quick corn breads of everywhere else. Cornmeal was cheap and local, wheat flour was bought, and a recipe using seven or eight parts meal to one part flour is a thrift recipe first and foremost, with just enough wheat to give the yeast something to hold. The lidded pan belongs to the same economy of means; before reliable oven thermostats, a cover was the simplest way to keep the top of a slow-rising loaf from setting hard while the interior was still expanding. Buckeye Cookery (1877) assembled contributions from housekeepers across the Midwest, and the Litchfield, Minnesota attribution is typical: the book's authority came from named women in named towns rather than from a single author.