CornBREAD

Corn bread is a quick bread just like other cake-like quick breads. Think banana bread, zucchini bread, etc. Northerners tend to add a lot of sugar to their cornbread and southerners do not. Northerners tend to use a combination of cornmeal and flour and southerners tend to use all cornmeal. Quick breads are leavened with chemicals, AKA, baking powder. Yeast-raised breads are not cake-like because they require the tough network of gluten to contain the CO2 produced by the yeast. It sounds like you want a yeast-raised bread that contains corn meal.

There is no reason you can't add some corn meal to your favorite yeast bread recipe. Here is a link to a recipe that I found

recipe is essentially a Victorian milk bread recipe with cornmeal added.In fact, it is the recipe that I use for basic white bread and rolls. Myrecipe does not use eggs like the one I referenced. You can follow thatrecipe and leave out the eggs. You may need to increase the water a bit tocompensate for the lost moisture contributed by the eggs. I oftensubstitute up to a cup of oats or whole wheat flour in this recipe.

Howdy,

I have no idea if this is the sort of thing you are looking for, but...

Years ago, in the Farm Journal, I found a recipe for something called North-South Corn Bread.

The piece explained that the tradition for corn bread in the North of the US was for an unsweetened bread-like approach while that of the Southern section of the US was for a sweet, cake-like product.

The recipe was to be "somewhere in between" the two approaches.

I suspect that I could dig it out if you would like to know more...

All the best,

I apologize that I escaped higher-education studying only physics (to the exclusion of both inorganic and organic chemistry :-( But it sounds like you are saying that because corn doesn't have the same properties as wheat (gluten, etc.) you can't make the same kind of product with corn meal as you do with wheat flour?

I don't suppose that "Wonder Bread" actually qualifies as "bread"? :-) As a child, my parents explained that the name is short for "It's a Wonder they can call it Bread"

Thank you for the recipe. Can you speculate how it would perform with whole-grain flour? And/or with a different proportion of wheat flour vs. corn meal?

You can not make yeast-raised bread from 100% cornmeal. Cornmeal has no gluten and will not rise from fermentation. You would end up with a brick.

Wonder Bread is bread. It may not be your idea of good food, but it is a yeast raised bread by any measure.

I would not use more than 50% whole wheat flour. Whole wheat flour has less gluten than white flour. Although people will disagree, I find that bread made with 100% whole wheat flour is heavy, dense, brick-like, and has an unpleasant texture. In addition, the sharp particles of the wheat hull in WW flour disrupts the gluten network, reducing the effectiveness of the already reduced gluten. I suspect that cornmeal would do the same. I would start using one cup of WW flour OR oats OR corn meal. If that works, increase the amount to two cups. At some point you find the ratio that you like. If the bread becomes too heavy, you can try adding some wheat gluten which can usually be found in the baking isle of the supermarket or online.

Thank you very much, Vox.

I use a similar argument about domestic beers... Bud (even Lite!) *is* beer. It is well made, consistent, with a great deal of quality control and science behind it. It's a very good example of a style that I just don't like, myself.

Dave

I was watching a program on TV recently that discussed the history of Wonder Bread. I didn't realize that was the first nationally distributed bread. There was a Wonder Bread bakery near the campus where I went to school. I can remember the aroma of bread wafting over the neighborhood.

I'm with you on the corn breads that are more like cornbread-flavored cake. Try this one, from a 1940s cookbook, that I have used for years:

2 eggs, slightly beaten 1-1/2 cups milk 1/4 cup melted shortening 1-1/2 cups yellow corn meal 3/4 cup sifted flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon sugar 2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder

Beat eggs, add milk and shortening. Sift dry ingredients together, add to liquid ingredients and beat well. Pour into greased shallow pan (My notes: 1: a cast iron pan works wonderfully, but turn the heat down 25 degrees, and 2: You have about the volume of an 8-inch-square pan or a

9-inch round pan) and bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until it shrinks from the sides of the pan.

I think what he wants is something with more corn meal and less cake flour -- or at least that's what I've had to fight in cornbread recipes.

I bet it's similar to squaw bread or third bread, which also has rye in it, and I'm with you on loving it. Don't have a recipe at hand for it, but I'm sure there are lots of squaw bread recipes on the internet.