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Bread

Corn Meal Yeast Bread

A yeasted bread made with cornmeal and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Corn Meal Yeast Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Add salt to the liquid and bring to a boil.

  2. Slowly add corn meal, stirring constantly until fully incorporated.

  3. Remove from heat, cool the mixture, and add the softened compressed yeast in warm water.

  4. Add 2 ⅓ cups of flour and knead the dough.

  5. Let the dough rise until it doubles in size, knead again, and place in a pan.

Bake

  1. When light, bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for at least an hour.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn meal
Gives the bread its coarse texture and characteristic corn flavour.
Flour
Provides gluten structure that holds the dough together and lets it rise.
Compressed yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, causing the dough to rise and become light.
Milk and water
Hydrates the flour and corn meal so the dough can form and develop gluten.

The step that matters

Cool the cornmeal mixture before adding yeast. Yeast is killed or weakened by high heat, so the mixture must be cooled before the softened yeast is added. Adding it while hot can stop the dough from rising.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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