Beard on Bread (26 page)

• For white soda bread, use 4 cups all-purpose flour, preferably unbleached, and the same amounts of salt and baking powder called for in the master recipe, but decrease the baking soda to ¾ teaspoon. Otherwise, the bread is prepared in exactly the same way as in the master recipe.

The late Helen Evans Brown was a specialist in California’s traditional foods. This recipe of hers is an extremely moist, rich bread that is delicious with plenty of butter. It can be served with such things as roast pork or a roast turkey or even with a good stew. It is one of my oldest bread recipes, and one of my very favorites. As a matter of fact, I have often served it for large parties, doubling the recipe, which is very simple.

[9 to 10 servings]

Scrape the kernels from the corn cobs and combine with the remaining ingredients. Pour into a well-buttered 9-inch-square baking dish or 2½-quart soufflé dish. Bake in a preheated 350° oven for 1 hour. Serve with melted butter or with the sauce from the main dish.

Cornsticks are different in their way from cornbread. They are baked in a mold shaped like a row of corn ears. The mold is heated as hot as possible after you have greased it with bacon fat, goose grease, or homemade lard, which will give a good flavor and won’t burn the way butter will. The cornsticks usually bake to a golden color and are puffy inside and deliriously crunchy on the outside. For a variation, add 2 tablespoons of fresh grated corn.

This recipe will make about 14 sticks. Most cornstick molds make 7 or 8, so you can bake one batch, quickly regrease the mold, and bake another batch during the meal. Before using a new mold it is wise to follow the rules for curing it, generally given on the label. Then try these very good, simple-to-make cornsticks.

“Clay” is Clayton Triplette, who has been my assistant and housekeeper for many years, and who is no mean cook himself.

[About 14 cornsticks]

Sift the dry ingredients together, and stir in the milk and melted butter to make a light batter, along with the eggs. Generously grease the mold with any fat except butter and heat until very hot. Spoon the batter into the mold to make it three-quarters full. Bake in a preheated 400° oven 18 to 20 minutes, until the cornsticks are brown and puffy. Remove at once, regrease the mold, and refill with the remaining batter. Serve the cornsticks hot from the molds with plenty of butter.

This is as American as any food can be because it was created by our early settlers as an accompaniment for Boston baked beans. It has a delicious personality of its own. I remember that in our house it was steamed in baking powder tins, which produced a lovely cylindrical loaf, after which it was dried out for a short time in the oven. The one-pound baking powder tins we used to get are no longer quite the same. Nowadays you might try one-pound coffee cans, although they are larger. This recipe will make enough for 2 one-pound tins or 4 half-pound baking powder tins.

Combine the dry ingredients, add the molasses and the buttermilk, and stir until very well mixed. Then pour two-thirds full into well-buttered 1-pound molds—1-pound coffee tins or baking tins or any type of mold that will be airtight; the long tins in which English biscuits come are ideal, too. (Be sure to butter the lid as well as the tin.) Cover the lid with foil and tie it so it will be watertight. Place the mold on a trivet or a rack in a large kettle containing enough boiling water to come halfway up around the mold. Cover the kettle tightly and steam for 1½ to 2 hours, adding more boiling water if needed. Remove the bread and dry slightly in a 350° oven. Eat warm, with plenty of butter.

• Add 1 cup raisins to the dough before steaming.

This rather unusual loaf has a very pleasant flavor, a little on the sweet side, and a distinctive texture. The built-in moisture provided by the zucchini makes it a very good keeper. It can be prepared with 1 cup of whole-wheat flour instead of all white flour.

[2 loaves]

Beat the eggs until light and foamy. Add the sugar, oil, zucchini, and vanilla and mix lightly but well. Combine the flour, salt, soda, baking powder, and cinnamon and add to the egg-zucchini mixture. Stir until well blended, add nuts, and pour into two 9 × 5 × 3-inch greased loaf pans. Bake in a preheated 350° oven for 1 hour. Cool on a rack.

Another extremely popular baking-soda fruit bread, rich in flavor and rather tight in texture, this is more banana-y than the one that follows. It is extraordinarily good for small sandwiches or as a breakfast or luncheon bread, and it makes excellent toast. The top may crack during baking, but that is of no great consequence.