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Bread

Corn-meal Light Bread

A light bread made with cornmeal mush, flour, yeast, and optional shortening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,165 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Corn-meal Light Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mush

  1. Cook ½ cup dry corn meal with 1¼ cups water for 10 minutes to 1 hour in a double boiler or over boiling water to make a mush.

  2. Cool the mush until lukewarm.

Make and rise the dough

  1. In a mixing bowl, combine the lukewarm mush, salt, sugar, shortening (if using), flour, and yeast.

  2. Mix until well combined, then knead until smooth.

  3. Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into a loaf and place it in a greased loaf pan.

  2. Let it rise again until it has risen above the edge of the pan.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 30–40 minutes or until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn meal mush
Provides cornmeal flavor and moisture, giving the loaf a tender, slightly grainy crumb.
Flour
Builds the gluten network that gives the loaf its structure and chewy crumb.
Yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in the crust.
Shortening
Adds fat that softens the crumb and helps keep the loaf moist.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled and again above the pan edge. Yeast gas production sets the loaf's volume and crumb. Under-proofed dough bakes dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse or lose structure in the oven.

“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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