corona st.: Anadama Bread

Second post of the day!! I (Dave) have been commissioned to write a blog post about anadama bread. This special and unique bread is most well known in the New England area. In Colorado, people have no clue what it is. Basically, it is a bread that is made with a mix of whole wheat and white flour, and has molasses and cornmeal added to give it a very distinctive flavor and texture. There are some tall tales floating around as to how the bread got its name. It basically revolves around a disgruntled husband not wanting to wait for his wife to get around to making the bread, or who is unpleased with the daily dinner of cornmeal mush, so he throws the ingredients in a pan, bakes it, all the while exclaiming “Anna! Damn Her!” True story? Who cares, it’s good bread.

You start with a half cup of molasses, a half cup of cornmeal

and 2 tbsp. of butter, with some boiling water added to make the meal mushy. That needs to sit until it is cool. Then, activate your yeast. I use a tablespoon, with a pinch of sugar and 2/3 cup of hot from the sink water, not boiling – too hot for yeast! Once it starts to get foamy, you can combine it with your mush. You will add 2 cups of whole wheat flour and salt – don’t forget the salt. It is amazing, the weird things that happen to bread when you don’t put salt in. One of the many times I made this bread without salt, I cut into it and it was completely hollow in the middle! I don’t get it, because I am not a scientist. Also, it tastes horrible.

After this is mixed up well, add white flour. I add a cup at a time, mixing up until it is too hard to mix. Then turn it out onto a floured work surface and apply more flour – it will still be pretty sticky. I think I usually add about 2 ½ to 3 cups of white flour to the mixture before it is done. Then knead. Knead ‘till you can’t knead no more. About 10 minutes. Put some vegetable oil in a bowl and throw your dough in there. I let it rise for 1 ½ to 2 hours. Take the dough out of the bowl, knead it a bit, and then form it into loaves. We usually do one big sandwich loaf of this bread, but it works very nicely as two round loaves, especially if you are going to use it on its own with some butter instead of for sandwiches. Let your loaves rise for about 45 minutes – if you do one big sandwich loaf it is going to get huge and saggy, so don’t let it over-rise.

This is how it will look right before it goes into the oven. Preheat your oven for 400 – the recipe says 350 but I always bake bread at 400 – and when it is time to bake your bread, throw ½ cup of water in the bottom of the oven. The steam is good and helps you form a crunchier crust. 45 minutes does the trick for one loaf, and 40 minutes is long enough for smaller loaves. Put it on a cooling rack and let the bread cool completely before cutting into it if you can help it.