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Hermit Bread

A simple bread made from wheat flour and cornmeal, seasoned with sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hermit Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Grind two-thirds of the wheat flour and one-third of the cornmeal separately.

  2. Sift the cornmeal and boil it for at least 7 hours.

Make the dough

  1. Add salt to taste and mix the boiled cornmeal with the wheat flour until stiff.

Bake and serve

  1. Shape into large loaves and bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C).

  2. Serve hot or cold; it keeps moist and sweet for a long time.

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. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat flour
Forms the main structure of the dough, holding it together as it bakes.
Cornmeal
Adds body and a coarse texture, and boiling it helps it bind into the dough.

The step that matters

Boiling the cornmeal. The cornmeal must be boiled for a long time so its starch fully cooks and gelatinizes. Under-cooked cornmeal stays gritty and does not bind well with the flour.

“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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