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Beaten Corn Bread
3/4 cup white corn meal 3/4 cup white flour 1 teaspoon sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon butter Water Mix and sift the dry ingredients and rub the butter thoroughly into the mixture by means of a fork. Add a little water, enough to moisten the mixture throughout, but not too much, as it must be crumbly. Spread on a board, and beat thoroughly with a rolling pin or mallet, as is done with beaten biscuits, folding it over frequently to introduce air. Roll out about one-half inch thick, cut into small pieces, and bake in a moderate oven. In camp this can be baked in a hot greased pan propped up before a hot fire. When cooked there should be a layer of custard on top of the cake or small bits of custard distributed through it.
A patent beating machine is now on the market which gives the same result as a rolling-pin with a greater saving of time and muscle. Serve the bread hot with plenty of butter.
This is a beaten bread, not a batter bread: the dough carries no leavening at all, and every bit of lift comes from air pounded into a stiff paste. The beating is the whole recipe.
- Beat far longer than feels reasonableBeaten biscuit dough was worked 20 to 30 minutes by hand, folded over on itself every few strokes, until the surface turned smooth and satiny and blistered slightly. Ten minutes of half-hearted whacking gives a hard cracker instead of a flaky, layered bread. A stand mixer with a dough hook or a few pulses in a food processor will do the same work; the dough should be stiff enough to hold a fold.
- How much waterThe recipe gives none. Add water a tablespoon at a time to roughly 1/4 to 1/3 cup total, stopping while the mass is still crumbly and only just coheres when pressed. A dough that feels like ordinary biscuit dough is already too wet to beat.
- Moderate oven350 to 375F. Half-inch pieces will take 15 to 20 minutes and should be pale gold rather than browned; these breads dry out fast and were meant to be eaten straight from the oven.
- White corn mealSouthern-style fine white cornmeal, not the coarse yellow grind. Stone-ground white meal is the closest current equivalent; coarse meal will not hydrate in this small amount of water and leaves the bread gritty.
- The "custard"The recipe expects a layer of custard on top or bits of custard through the cake, which is characteristic of the wetter spoon breads and batter breads rather than a stiff beaten dough. Do not wait for a custard layer or you will overbake the bread.
- The patent beating machineMost likely a biscuit brake, a hand-cranked pair of rollers bolted to a table, sold to Southern households from the late nineteenth century. Passing the dough through a pasta machine repeatedly, folding between passes, is the nearest modern substitute.
- The camp methodThe propped, greased pan before a fire cooks by radiant heat on one side only. Modern equivalent: a heavy cast-iron skillet, well greased and preheated, turned once.
- YieldAbout a dozen small pieces. The recipe directs that they be served hot with plenty of butter.
Beaten biscuits belong to the flour-and-muscle tradition of the upper South, where soft winter wheat and a shortage of reliable chemical leavening produced a bread raised entirely by air beaten into the dough, usually by whoever in the household had the least say in the matter. This cornmeal variant stretches white flour with meal and pushes the technique toward the hoecakes and ash breads of the same region. The "patent beating machine" mentioned at the end is most likely the biscuit brake, a roller device sold to Southern kitchens around the turn of the twentieth century.