email this pageThe addition of cornmeal to a yeast bread dough adds a characteristic toothsome, pleasing, irresistible crunch, a grit. It makes you feel, when you bite into a slice, that, in writer Gertrude Stein’s words, there’s a there there.
No one wants a bread that is leaden, but substantial is another matter. “Light,” as Americans are discovering, is not always the be-all and end-all of bread. There’s the nutritional wallop whole grains pack, and hearty, hefty multi-grain breads simply taste and feel so good in the mouth. As local artisanal bakeries spring up across America, it’s becoming easier to find such loaves.
But nothing beats making your own. Anadama Bread, an American original dating from the Colonial era, combines European wheat and whole wheat with America’s primary native grain, corn. A drizzle of molasses for color and flavor and a bit of spice and you have a fine-grained, delicious bread, excellent when homemade from scratch.
What of its peculiar name? A highly suspect legend says a disgruntled farmer, disgusted with his slatternly wife, Anna, mixed up a dough of whatever was on hand, and said, “Take this to Anna, damn her, and tell her to bake it.” But to whom did he utter these words? And what was this farmer’s name? And where and when did this unhappy couple live? As the authors of the Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book say, “This fine combination could never have been born of anger; it is just too good.”
Anadama Bread
Ingredients
2 cups lukewarm water
3 tablespoons blackstrap molasses
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 cup yellow cornmeal
¾ teaspoon nutmeg
3 ½ to 4 cups unbleached white flour
1 ¾ to 2 cups whole-wheat flour
2 teaspoons salt
2. Stir in oil, cornmeal, nutmeg, 3 ½ cups white flour and 1 ¾ cups whole wheat flour.
3. Beat with a wooden spoon until dough is sticky. Knead dough thoroughly on a clean, floured surface, for about 5 minutes, adding more flour if needed, but not too much as this should be a somewhat sticky dough. Place dough in an oiled bowl, cover with a clean cloth, and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 1 to 1 ½ hours. Punch down and allow dough to rise a second time, about 45 to 50 minutes, again until doubled.
5. Punch dough down a third time and divide it in half. Form into loaves and place in sprayed 9 x 5 x 2 ½-inch loaf pans. Let rise a third time, covered, for 30 to 35 minutes or until almost doubled in bulk. Towards the end of this rising, preheat oven to 350 F.
6. Bake loaves about 45 to 55 minutes or until brown and crusty on both tops and bottoms. Remove loaves from pans and let cool on a rack. Makes two loaves, 12 slices per loaf.
By Cresecent Dragonwagon, "Relish the American Table," February 26, 2006
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