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The Bread of Our Forefathers
Put in a pan two quarts of meal, a half-pint of flour, stir up well; pour in the center a pint of boiling water, stir up enough of the meal to make a thin batter; when cool, put in a cup of yeast, a tea-spoon of salt and enough warm water to make a thick batter; let rise, then place in a deep, well-greased pan, cover with another pan, and place in a moderate oven. When nearly done, remove the cover, and bake slowly until done. Excellent when cold. All baking-pans for bread should be made with covers, made of the same material, and high enough to permit the bread to rise to its full size. If pan is deep enough to permit the bread to rise without touching it, a flat piece of tin or sheet-iron will answer for the cover, or a cover may be made of paper, or another pan may. be inverted over the bread. The office of the cover is to prevent the crust from browning hard before the expansion of the gases has made the bread light and porous. - Mrs. C. V. Collier, Litchfield, Minnesota.
A yeast-raised cornmeal loaf, baked covered so it can expand before the crust sets. Two things carry it: scalding the meal, and keeping the lid on for most of the bake.
- Meal means cornmeal"Meal" in this book is cornmeal, and two quarts is roughly 8 cups, about 2 1/2 lb. The half-pint of flour is one cup of wheat flour, there for a little gluten structure. Stone-ground medium grind behaves closest to what Mrs. Collier would have had.
- Scald the meal properlyThe pint of boiling water poured into the center and stirred into part of the meal is the hinge of the recipe. It gelatinizes the starch so the loaf holds moisture and does not crumble; skip it and you get dry, sandy bread.
- Wait for it to cool"When cool" means below about 110F before the yeast goes in. Cornmeal mush holds heat far longer than it feels like it should, so test it rather than guessing.
- A cup of yeastThat is a cup of liquid barm or homemade potato yeast, not modern dry yeast. Two teaspoons of active dry or instant yeast, slaked in a little of the warm water, stands in for it, and the cup of liquid it replaces should be added back as warm water.
- Oven numbersA moderate oven is usually reckoned at roughly 350F, with period usage ranging about 325 to 375F. "Bake slowly until done" after the cover comes off suggests dropping to about 300 to 325F. Expect a long bake for a loaf this size, likely an hour and a quarter or more, and look for an internal temperature near 200F.
- The coverAny deep pan with a loose lid, an inverted second pan, or foil crimped over will do what the original describes. Leave headroom so the rising dough never touches the cover, and remove it for the last 20 to 30 minutes to color the crust.
- SaltOne teaspoon for 8 cups of meal is thin by modern palates. Two to three teaspoons will not harm the rise and makes the bread taste of something.
- Rising time and yieldCorn-heavy doughs rise slowly and never dramatically; give it until visibly puffed rather than doubled. This makes one very large loaf, easily 12 to 16 servings, and it is worth halving the first time. The note that it is "excellent when cold" is accurate, and it toasts well.
Yeast-raised cornmeal loaves like this one sit behind the modern quick-bread cornbread that soda and baking powder made possible. Before chemical leavens were cheap and reliable, a cook who wanted light cornbread had to borrow gluten from a little wheat flour and time from a pot of barm, and scalding the meal was one common way to keep a mostly-corn loaf from crumbling. The recipe itself explains the point of the covered deep pan at length: the lid holds the crust soft while the expanding gases make the bread light. The Dixie Cook Book was assembled in part from signed contributions, which is how a recipe titled for "our forefathers" arrives from Litchfield, Minnesota rather than the South.