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Bread

Hoe Cake

A bread made from Indian meal, boiling water, butter or lard and salt, baked on a board before the fire.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Hoe Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Pour boiling water over the Indian meal.

  2. Stir in the butter or lard and salt.

  3. Knead the dough for 10 minutes until stiff.

Bake

  1. Bake on a board in front of the fire slowly.

  2. When browned on one side, turn it using a thread.

  3. Return to the fire and bake the other side.

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

Indian meal
Forms the bulk of the flatbread, providing its body and structure once hydrated and cooked.
Butter or lard
Adds fat that softens the texture and gives the bread richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Pour boiling water over the Indian meal. Boiling water swells and gelatinizes the cornmeal starch, which lets the dough hold together without gluten. Cooler water leaves the meal gritty and crumbly.

“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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