Crackling Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Combine cornmeal and salt in a bowl.
Place cracklings in cheesecloth.
Squeeze out excess fat while warm.
Make the dough
Pour boiling water over the cornmeal until it reaches a mashable consistency.
Mix in the cracklings.
Shape and bake
Shape into cakes and bake.
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
What each ingredient does
- Cornmeal
- Forms the bulk of the bread and sets into a firm, starchy crumb when cooked.
- Cracklings
- Add fat and savory flavor, and make the bread richer and more tender.
- Boiling water
- Hydrates the cornmeal and gelatinizes its starch, so it binds into a mashable dough.
The step that matters
Pour boiling water until the cornmeal is mashable. Boiling water must be added gradually. Too little leaves the cornmeal dry and crumbly, while too much makes the dough sticky and hard to shape. Hot water gelatinizes the starch, helping the dough hold together.
“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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