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Corn Bread with Yeast
Follow the recipe for corn muffins with yeast. Bake twenty minutes in well-greased, shallow pan, instead of muffin tins. in well-greased , shallow pan, instead of muffin tins.
This is a variant note rather than a standalone recipe: it depends entirely on the yeast-raised corn muffin formula elsewhere in the book. What it supplies is the pan and the time, and both need translating.
- Temperature, which the original omitsNo oven heat is specified here or implied by any oven term. Twenty minutes for a shallow pan of batter suggests a fairly brisk oven; modern bakers of comparable breads generally work in the 400-425F range, and at a lower heat the bread will need longer.
- "Shallow pan"Simply a pan with low sides rather than a loaf tin. An 8x8 or 9x9 inch square pan gives a layer roughly an inch thick and is the closest common equivalent.
- Greasing"well-greased" was written for an uncoated pan. Butter, bacon fat or lard brushed on generously will keep the bread from sticking and help the bottom crust.
- The rise still mattersBecause the leavening is yeast rather than baking powder, the batter must be allowed to prove in the pan before it goes in the oven, as in the muffin recipe. Baking a slack, unproved yeast batter gives a dense, faintly beery slab.
- DonenessJudge by a firm, springy centre and edges that have pulled slightly from the pan, not by the clock. Cornmeal browns before the interior sets, so colour alone is misleading.
- Yield and servingA 9-inch square pan cuts into 9 or 12 squares. Best eaten warm the day it is baked; yeast corn bread stales quickly.
Corn bread raised with yeast rather than chemical leavening is the older of the two methods, and it survived in printed cookbooks well into the twentieth century as a slower, more bread-like alternative to the quick soda and baking-powder breads that came to dominate American kitchens after the 1860s. Cornmeal has no gluten, so such batters almost always carry a proportion of wheat flour to give the yeast something to hold; the corn contributes sweetness, colour and a slightly gritty crumb. An entry like this one, sending the cook back to the muffin formula and changing only the pan, saves space: one batter, several shapes.