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Pumpkin Bread
1½ cups white corn meal 1 cup boiling water 1 cup sour milk 1 cup baked pumpkin or squash 1 egg (well-beaten) 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon (level) soda 1 teaspoon (heaping) baking powder 1 teaspoon (heaping) sugar 1 teaspoon melted butter.
Scald ½ cup meal with 1 cup boiling water. Add sour milk, baked pumpkin, beaten egg, salt, balance of cornmeal sifted twice with the soda and baking powder. Mix quickly and beat in well 1 heaping teaspoon sugar and 1 of melted butter. Stir and beat into a light batter. Pour into baking pan until it is about 1 inch in thickness. Bake quickly and serve hot. -Mrs. A. W. Fraser, Iron Springs, Alta.
A corn batter bread rather than a sweet loaf — one heaping teaspoon of sugar in the whole pan. It bakes flat and thin and is meant to be cut in squares and eaten hot with butter.
- Bake quickly"Quickly" here means a hot oven; a quick oven of the period is generally reckoned at about 400-425F. A one-inch batter should take roughly 20-25 minutes at that heat; it is done when set in the centre and browned at the edges.
- Sour milkGenuine soured raw milk is what the soda is reacting with. Use buttermilk cup for cup, or add a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar to a cup of whole milk and let it stand ten minutes. Fresh milk will leave the soda untidy and soapy-tasting.
- The scalding step is the hingePouring boiling water over half a cup of the meal gelatinises the starch and gives the bread its moist, tender crumb instead of the dry grittiness cornmeal otherwise produces. Let that mush cool to warm before the egg goes in, or you will scramble it.
- White corn mealFine or medium stone-ground white cornmeal, not yellow, and not the coarse polenta grind. Yellow meal works but gives a sweeter, more assertive flavour that changes the character of the bread.
- Baked pumpkinOne cup of pumpkin or winter squash roasted until soft and mashed, drained if it is watery. Canned pumpkin purée is a fair substitute; canned pumpkin pie filling, which is sweetened and spiced, is not.
- Soda and baking powder togetherThe soda works on the acid in the sour milk, and the baking powder supplies further lift. Sift both through the remaining cup of meal as directed and get the pan into the oven promptly — the rise begins as soon as the batter is wet.
- Pan size and yieldNo pan is specified. A 9-inch square or a 10-inch cast-iron skillet, greased, puts the batter at about the inch of depth called for. It serves six to eight as a bread at table.
- Serve hotBatter breads of this kind are at their best within twenty minutes of leaving the oven. Cold, the corn crumb goes dense; reheat leftovers in a hot oven rather than eating them out of hand.
The Five Roses book was distributed by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and built largely from recipes sent in by Canadian homemakers, which is why this one carries a name and a town — Mrs. A. W. Fraser of Iron Springs, Alberta. That collaborative structure gives the book a regional spread that a single-author cookbook could not manage, and it explains the appearance of a corn batter bread in a Canadian flour promotional: cornmeal breads leavened with soda and sour milk were cheap and quick to mix, and sour milk was an ingredient many households had on hand. Adding cooked pumpkin or squash to a corn batter is an old economy — it stretches the meal, adds moisture and is often said to keep the bread from staling as fast, and squash was among the crops a prairie garden could produce in quantity and store through winter.