Johnnycake
2 cups warm skim milk, or whole milk 1 cake compressed yeast 3/4 pound sifted bread flour, or Graham that is real wheat meal 1 egg 1/3 cup warm milk 2/3 cup sugar 2/3 cup of a lardlike vegetable shortening 4 teaspoons salt 2 1/2 cups cornmeal Make a sponge of the first three ingredients. Cream together the shortening, sugar, and egg, and add to the sponge after it has become light. Also add the milk, salt, and cornmeal, and beat well together. This should make a thick batter. Spread in an oiled pan in which it will be about three-fourths inch thick (a pan 8 x 12 inches is about the right size). Set in a warm place, and allow it to rise about one-eighth inch, not more, then bake. The sponge for this johnnycake may be set at night, using one-fourth yeast cake.
A yeast-raised cornbread rather than the flat griddle johnnycake of earlier books. The original gives no oven temperature, so the numbers below are the ones this batter wants.
- The rise is the hingeLet it rise only about 1/8 inch, as written. A yeasted cornmeal batter has little gluten structure; proofed until visibly puffy it collapses in the oven and bakes dense and damp in the middle.
- YeastA compressed yeast cake of the usual small size is about 0.6 oz, generally reckoned as roughly 2 1/4 teaspoons of active dry yeast (use a little less if using instant). Period cake sizes varied, so treat this as approximate. The overnight option calls for a quarter cake, which works out to a bit over 1/2 teaspoon of dry yeast.
- Flour by weight3/4 pound of sifted flour is 12 oz, about 3 cups sifted and spooned. Weigh it if you can; the batter's thickness depends on it.
- Graham flour"Graham that is real wheat meal" means whole wheat flour with the bran and germ retained, typically ground coarser than modern whole wheat. It can stand in for the bread flour here; expect a heavier, moister crumb than the bread-flour version.
- ShorteningA "lardlike vegetable shortening" means hydrogenated vegetable shortening, sold as a substitute for lard. Modern shortening works directly; solid coconut oil or softened butter can also be creamed, though butter adds its own flavor and a little water.
- OvenBake at 375F for 25 to 35 minutes, until the top is browned and a tester comes out clean. Cornmeal batters this thick want a moderate-to-brisk oven rather than a hot one, or the crust sets before the center cooks.
- Salt4 teaspoons is high by current taste for this volume of batter. Halving it to 2 teaspoons is a reasonable adjustment, particularly if you are serving it with a salty dish.
- YieldAn 8 x 12 pan gives about 12 generous squares. Best warm; it firms up considerably once cold and reheats well.
Johnnycake began as the plainest of American breads: cornmeal, salt, water or milk, cooked on a griddle, a hoe blade, or a board propped before the fire. The name is generally traced either to "journey cake" or to "Shawnee cake," and neither derivation is settled. What appears here is a much later creature, a yeast-raised pan bread that borrows the old name for a batter built on a sponge, sugar, egg and fat. The recipe belongs to the domestic-science era, when household cookery books were being rewritten around measured quantities, skim milk, and hydrogenated vegetable shortenings promoted as substitutes for lard. The instruction to set the sponge at night with a quarter cake of yeast echoes older practice, when bread was begun the evening before and baked the following morning.