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Corn Bread
Those who like corn-meal will find this a simple recipe. Put 1 pint of fine corn-meal, 1 teaspoonful of salt and I heaping tablespoonful of shortening in a bowl. Pour over just enough boiling water to moisten, cover and let stand until blood warm. Add 2 beaten eggs, 1 cupful of milk and enough sifted flour to make a thin batter. Stir in I heaping teaspoonful of baking-powder, beat hard and pour a scant inch thick in a well-greased pan. Bake about twentyfive minutes in a hot oven.
A scalded-meal cornbread: the boiling water gelatinizes the starch before the eggs and milk go in, which is what keeps the crumb tender rather than gritty. A few of the measurements need translating.
- The scald is the hingeAdd the boiling water a little at a time, only until the meal is damp and clumping — not soupy. Too much water here and no amount of flour will bring the batter back to the right consistency.
- "Blood warm"Body temperature, roughly 98F. Allow as long as it takes for the covered meal to cool to that point; the aim is to cool the mush enough that the eggs do not scramble when they go in.
- A pint of corn-mealTwo cups by volume. "Fine" meal means a finely ground yellow or white meal, not stone-ground coarse grits and not the self-rising cornmeal mix sold in the South, which already contains leavening and salt.
- ShorteningHere this means a solid cooking fat, most likely lard or drippings. Butter, bacon fat or vegetable shortening all work; use about 1 1/2 tablespoons.
- "Enough sifted flour"Genuinely open-ended. Start with 1/2 cup of all-purpose and add by spoonfuls; a "thin batter" here means one that pours in a ribbon, closer to pancake batter than to a spoonable dough.
- Hot oven425 to 450F. Grease the pan and put it in the oven to heat while you mix — pouring the batter into a hot greased pan is what produces the crisp bottom crust.
- Pan and depthA scant inch of batter fills a 9-inch square or a 10-inch cast-iron skillet. Twenty-five minutes is right for that depth; deeper batter needs longer and will dry at the edges before the centre sets.
- Baking-powderA heaping teaspoon is about 1 1/2 level teaspoons of modern double-acting powder. Get it into the oven promptly once it is stirred in.
- YieldEight to nine squares. Best eaten hot.
Scalding the meal before mixing is an old technique that predates chemical leavening entirely — it belongs to the family of mush breads, spoonbreads and batter breads made wherever maize was the cheap grain, and it survives because it solves a real problem: cornmeal has no gluten and absorbs liquid slowly, so meal wetted with cold liquid stays sandy on the tongue. Boiling water swells the starch first and the finished crumb is softer for it. The recipe is a frugal one: two eggs, a cup of milk and a spoonful of whatever fat was in the kitchen stretch two cups of cheap grain into a pan of hot bread.