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Apache Bread
2 CUPS CORN MEAL (MIXED YELLOW AND WHITE) I TEASPOON SALT 1/8 TEASPOON CAYENNE I CUP BOILING WATER 1/2 CUP HOT BACON FAT Mix meal, salt and cayenne, add boiling water and beat. Add fat and let stand until cool. Make into short rolls the thickness of a banana. Wrap each roll in a corn husk, tie with a string or a strip of corn husk doubling over ends of husk and securing so contents cannot escape. Cook over steam or in moderate oven 1 hour. If very carefully rolled and tied, may also be cooked in boiling water.
A steamed cornmeal dumpling wrapped in husk, closer to a plain tamal than to a loaf of bread. The dough is stiff and unleavened, so nothing here rises — success depends on wrapping tightly enough to keep water out.
- Soak the husks firstDried corn husks, sold in bags for tamales, need 30 minutes in hot water before they will fold without splitting. Fresh husks from summer corn can be used straight, and the inner leaves are the most pliable.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350-375F. Set the wrapped rolls on a rack over a pan of water so they steam rather than bake dry; an hour is what the recipe specifies for rolls of the stated thickness.
- Steaming is the surer methodA covered steamer basket over simmering water for an hour gives more even results than the oven and no risk of the husks scorching. Boiling, as the recipe allows, only works if the ties are genuinely watertight — one loose end and the dough turns to porridge.
- Bacon fat quantityHalf a cup of fat to two cups of meal is generous by modern taste and gives a rich, almost crumbly interior; less fat should still bind the dough. The recipe already calls for the fat to go in hot, which helps it disperse.
- Boiling water mattersThe water must be at a full boil when it goes in; this gelatinizes the starch and is what makes the dough hold together without egg or leavening. Beat hard and immediately, then let it stand until cool before shaping, as the recipe directs.
- Cornmeal choiceOrdinary stone-ground yellow and white meal is what is meant, not masa harina, which is nixtamalized and behaves differently. Fine or medium grind holds better than coarse.
- Heat levelAn eighth teaspoon of cayenne across two cups of meal reads as a faint warmth rather than heat. Scale up if you want it noticeable.
- YieldRoughly six to eight rolls, enough as a starch alongside grilled meat for four. They reheat well in their husks and travel cold.