Tag: quick breads

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A Note on Cornbread

My Choctaw ancestors–and other peoples across the Americas–made bread from maize long my other forbears were run out of the British Isles for debt and insurrection.

Choctaws made what is called shuck bread (bunaha) by mixing water and cornmeal into a stiff paste, forming the paste into balls, wrapping them in cooked corn shucks and boiling them for about an hour. They stored well and were reheated by boiling before serving. European expatriates made a similar bread by mixing meal, water, salt and lard into a batter and cooking it on a flat metal surface like a pancake. These are called hoecakes or dogbread. Much later came what we know as cornbread.

(Or at least what I know it as.)

When it comes to cornbread, I labored long under the impression that I was a confirmed orthodox. Yellow corn meal? A quarter cup of sugar? Nuh-uh, no way. That’s not cornbread, that’s corncake. A recipe using yellow meal, sugar and even (horror of horrors) butter just has Yankee written all over it. A Michigan-born hostess once served me such bread, and I’m sorry to say I pointed out what a culinary abomination it was. She set me in my place by being quite gracious about my gaffe, which made her a lady, and after dinner her husband offered to punch me in the nose, which made him a gentleman. (We still exchange Christmas cards.)

I once ran up on a California recipe for cornbread using vanilla flavoring that confirmed a whole slew of suspicions I’d long harbored about the frivolity if not to say instability of the West Coast mentality. I’ve also come across recipes with dill, cheddar cheese, yogurt, skim milk, blue corn meal, creamed corn, and even (I swear to God) tofu. What passes under the name of Mexican cornbread is subject to all manner of atrocities, the most bizarre of which I’ve found includes beef jerky and cactus flowers.

As a confirmed orthodox, I thought I was sitting on the front pew with my recipe, which has only white meal, just a little flour, eggs, buttermilk, salt and baking powders. But I found out that there are those who would cry, “Backslider!” at the thought of using bleached meal or even eggs. I just had never considered making cornbread without eggs, then I found that among the recipes you see printed on most meal packages you see this is called “egg bread,” and my faith began to falter. These no-egg purists, I began to believe, were true cornbread devotees who enjoyed a more chaste form of elemental Southern sustenance. I felt horribly decadent, which was not such a new sensation for me, but a cornbread recipe certainly was a novel indicator of my moral turpitude (more official records exist).

I got over it. After all, I had learned how to make cornbread at my mother’s knee, and she was a queen among cooks: “Honi soit qui mal y pense”, you wretched peasants.

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B-Flat Beer Bread

A  breathtakingly fundamental recipe resulting in a light, evenly-textured, slightly sour, fragrant loaf.

Lightly mix three cups of self-rising flour with a 12-ounce can of beer. I used Miller Lite (I think). Pour half the beer in a bowl, then alternate flour and beer. Add a teaspoon each salt and sugar. Blend until just mixed, a little lumpy and bubbly.

Pour into a well-greased loaf pan lined with parchment paper and bake at 350 in a preheated oven for about an hour, until it thumps hollow.  Brush with melted butter while warm.

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Beth Ann’s Banana Bread

Cream a stick of butter with a cup of brown sugar. Blend in two beaten eggs, a teaspoon each vanilla and almond extract, and two very ripe mashed bananas.

Using a whip, stir in a mix of 2 cups plain flour sifted with 2 teaspoons baking powder, and a teaspoon each baking soda and salt. Mix and add enough almond milk to make a smooth batter, a little on the thin side.

Pour into a lined and oiled 9×5 loaf pan, and place in a 350 oven until the loaf pulls away from the pan, about an hour.

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How to Make Cornbread

Pour about an eighth of an inch of oil, corn or vegetable, in the bottom of an eight inch skillet; doesn’t have to be cast iron, but it helps. Stick it in the oven on a high rack at about 425.

Then take three cups of white self-rising corn meal and about half a cup self-rising flour, mix in a bowl with a scant teaspoon baking soda and a dash or so of salt. Add about 1/3 cup of corn or vegetable oil and mix until about the consistency of rice. Add one large beaten egg, mix well, then add enough buttermilk to make a thick batter. Spoon in a splash of water.

Take your skillet out of the oven, tilt to coat the sides with oil, and test the heat with a drop of batter. It should sizzle; if not, heat some more. When oil is sufficiently hot, pour in the batter, shake the skillet to level it out, and bake until golden brown and a little crusty. Remove by inverting skillet.

Eat with butter immediately, and rejoice in being alive.

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Biscuits for Floozies

Making quick breads is such a basic culinary skill that at one time those persistent legions of people who spend their time minding other people’s business sniffed their disapproval of a newly-wed husband’s wife by saying, “He married a woman who can’t even make biscuits.”

Those were more genteel times. Nowadays, of course, those same people would just say he hooked up with a tramp and be done with it. For all you floozies out there who need a bonus the morning after–like a reputation–here’s how to make biscuits. And if you don’t carry a skillet with you, well, you’re on your own.

Like many short bread recipes, the one for biscuits is more technique than ingredients. Getting the biscuits to rise well is the key, and if you don’t follow a reasonable procedure, you’re going to end up throwing away a pan of hockey pucks.

Your ingredients work best if chilled. Biscuits shouldn’t be worked a lot; excess kneading makes the dough so dense that it won’t rise. Biscuits should also be cut out quickly while the dough is cool, and with a clean, sharp edge that will not pinch. Crowding the biscuits a bit also helps them to rise, but if you get them too close together the centers won’t bake through. Also make sure the oven is hot (450/475) before you put them on a rack in the upper third of the oven.

Buttermilk Biscuits

Take two cups of self-rising flour (I use Martha White) and sift in dry a scant teaspoon of baking soda; activated by the buttermilk, this helps the rise. Work thoroughly into this about 1/3 a cup of cold vegetable shortening or butter; shortening gives a lighter texture, butter a better flavor. Mix with the fingers until it has an almost granular texture. Then, working quickly, stir in enough cold buttermilk to make a sticky dough, about 3/4 cup.

Throw this dough out on a generously-floured surface, sprinkle with a scant more flour and knead a couple of times, enough to coat the dough with flour. Roll out to about a half-inch and cut into rounds. You can make them as big or small as you like, just be sure to cut them with a sharp edge: a Mason jar just won’t work.

Again, work quickly so that the dough doesn’t get warm. Place biscuits just touching in a lightly greased skillet and pop them into a hot oven for about a quarter an hour. You want them golden-brown and fragrant; brush lightly with butter while hot.

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Shortcake

Shortcake, like all quick breads, is more American than apple pie, since chemical leavening was developed in the U.S. in the late18th century, and people began making apple pies in central Asia shortly after wheat was domesticated.

The shortcake you’re likely to find sold in supermarkets strategically placed near a display of strawberries is actually a concave sponge cake, which is far different from the big, sweet biscuit that a real shortcake actually is. While shortcake is most often served with macerated strawberries, any fruit or berry in season works just as well.

Any good cookbook will give you a simple recipe for shortcake with flour, leavening, butter, sugar, and whole milk or cream. But if you google shortcake, you’re going to find a recipe involving sieved boiled egg yolks that purportedly came from James Beard’s mother. Now, I ask you: can there be a more authoritative source for a recipe than one from the mother of the “Dean of American Cookery?”

No, but I’m calling bullshit on this one, because eggs in any form are superfluous in a shortbread recipe, and sieved yolks are an even more suspicious inclusion. This recipe, used by a St. Louis restaurant, states that it was never printed in one of Beard’s cookbooks (he wrote dozens), and for good reason; because it SUCKS! Here is Beard’s recipe for shortcake from his enduring 1972 classic, American Cooking.

Sift a tablespoon of baking powder and a half teaspoon salt into two cups all-purpose flour, cut in a half stick cold butter, add about three-quarters cup of (cold!) milk, a quarter cup of sugar, and a teaspoon of vanilla. Work quickly into a sticky dough.

Spoon or spread the dough on a well-buttered cookie sheet. I always use buttered parchment paper as well. Place in an oven preheated to 400. Bake for about fifteen-twenty minutes until golden. Cool before serving.