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Bread

Light Bread

A cornmeal and Graham flour bread made with boiling cornmeal mush and yeast, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Light Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the sponge

  1. Pour 1½ pints of boiling cornmeal mush over 1 quart of Graham flour and let it cool.

  2. Add ½ teacup of jug yeast or 1 cake of dry yeast and let it stand overnight in a warm place.

  3. In the morning, the mixture should be light. Add more flour as needed for the desired quantity of bread.

Shape and bake

  1. Stir the mixture with a spoon until stiff, or knead it with your hands to form a very soft dough.

  2. Let the dough rise, then spoon it into pans without adding more flour, filling the pans half full.

  3. Allow the dough to rise to the top of the pans.

  4. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for one 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

What each ingredient does

Graham flour
Forms the bulk of the dough and provides the structure of the loaf.
Cornmeal mush
Adds moisture and a tender, soft crumb to the dough.
Yeast
Ferments the dough so it becomes light and rises before baking.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise to the top of the pans. Yeast gas trapped in the dough makes it expand; if the dough is under-proofed the loaf stays dense, while over-proofing can collapse it. Fill the pans only half full so there is room to rise before the heat sets the structure.

“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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