Corn Bread
Nov 16th, 2008 by SteveB
Lately, I’ve been so fascinated by various regional French breads that I’ve all but forgotten that North America has its own traditional breads. A case in point is corn bread. To many people, the term ‘corn bread’ conjures up visions of the dense, sometimes sweet, chemically leavened quick bread that is a staple of many a Thanksgiving Day table. To my mind, corn bread is a yeasted bread, based on wheat flour but with a substantial amount of corn flour used for its flavor, color and texture.
Because corn flour cannot form gluten, corn bread by nature has a relatively tight crumb. Taking a cue from Suas’ Advanced Bread and Pastry, I decided to dress up the bread a bit with some shaping and stenciling techniques. The idea was to form the loaves in the shape of a corn kernel, with the stenciling and scoring designed to give the impression of a stylized corn stalk. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether or not I was successful at achieving the desired effect.
The formula used here is a modification of the one described in Hamelman’s Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes. Instead of using fine corn meal as specified, I used yellow corn flour to give a finer crumb. White corn flour should work just as well.
Poolish
- 225 g King Arthur All-Purpose Flour
- 225 g Water
- 1/8 Tsp. Instant Dried Yeast
Final Dough
- 455 g King Arthur All-Purpose Flour
- 255 g Corn Flour
- 345 g Water
- 1½ Tsp. Instant Dried Yeast
- 15 g Salt
- 45 g Olive Oil
- 450 g Poolish (all of the above)
The evening before baking, the poolish was prepared by mixing the flour, water and yeast and allowing the mixture to ferment at 72ºF until mature, about 12 hours. The following morning, the corn meal was added to the final dough water in the bowl of a stand mixer and, after stirring to suspend the corn flour in the water, the rest of the final dough ingredients was added. The mixture was then mixed at speed 2 for 3 minutes to incorporate all of the ingredients.
After incorporation, the rough dough was removed from the bowl of the stand mixer and then hand mixed until a smooth dough of medium consistency was achieved. The dough was then placed in a lightly oiled covered container and allowed to ferment for 1½ hours, half-way through which the dough was given a fold.
After the first fermentation, the dough was divided into 455 g pieces and each piece was gently rounded. The rounded pieces where then covered with a plastic sheet and allowed to rest for 15 minutes. After resting, each piece was formed into a tight boule, shaped in the form of a corn kernel, and placed on a couche to proof for 1 hour at 72ºF, as shown below:
After proofing, each dough piece was stenciled by placing a strip of paper down the length of the piece, sprinkling with a light dusting of flour and then removal of the paper strip, as shown in the photos below:
The loaves were then scored three times on both sides of the stencil and baked at 450ºF for 30 minutes, the first 10 minutes of which were under steam. The resulting loaves had a thin, crisp crust with a golden yellow crumb.
Steve,
What a beautiful loaf and such an artistic effort. I love your attention to detail.
How was the flavor? As you say most of us have a mental imprint of a sweet quick bread when we think of corn bread. I like the aroma of corn tortillas off the grill, is there any of that?
Eric
Yes, the stenciling and slashing gave wonderful results! Looks very yummy and the crumb had a nice yellow color. Great recipe, Steve.
Jane
Eric, the bread had a wonderful corn aroma and a corn flavor that was really accentuated when the bread was toasted.
Jane, I was a little concerned about whether my decorative plan would work out. Thanks for the encouragement!
Steve, I am so impressed…it looks beautiful.
Did it have a tight crumb?
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Penny, thanks for your comments. The crumb was a lot more open than I had expected, perhaps due to the use of corn flour instead of the recommended fine corn meal.
Yummy! Beautiful bread, and I’m not a fan of corn breads. One of my sisters is looking for a good corn bread, I’m just going to send her a link to this recipe, thanks Steve!
(I’ll post my version of your normand bread ASAP, Steve, all my free time has been eaten by my gluten-free bread search, sorry;-))
Flo, it’s always nice to be able to win over the skeptics!
I hope your sister enjoys the bread. It makes a nice addition to the Thanksgiving Day table here in the US.
For anyone having an interest in gluten-free bread, Flo has a very informative series of posts on Makanai.
Steve, thanks for your visit at my version of your normand bread
) and this bread is beautiful. I enjoy with the recipe and the photos.
Carmen, when I’m ready to take on the challenge of baking some of the regional breads of Spain, I hope you (and Mònica from http://www.bonsfocs.blogspot.com) will be willing to give me a few pointers.
Very clever to use the paper to create a pattern with the dusting flour. Did you use corn flour for dusting?
This bread looks very much like the Portuguese style broa that I have been meaning to make for quite some time. Even though it’s quite open, is the crumb on the dense moist side?
Elizabeth, in this case I dusted with regular all-purpose flour, simply to get a better contrast between the golden color of the crust and the white color of the flour.
Although it’s hard to tell from the photo, the crumb is actually quite light, not at all dense.
Hi Steve, be sure that will recieve our help with Spanish bread. Carmen is the kneading Queen
. Just today Madrid tiene Miga has published (by Gusete) one recipe from Andalucia, I am sure that you have seen it.
Cheers.
Mònica
un pain superbement réussi,je vais m’empresser de le faire car j’adore le pain de mais&jevous le dirai si je l’ai réussi christiane
Mònica, thank you for your willingness to help. I have seen the recipe from Andalucia on Madrid tiene Miga and have added it to my list of recipes to try.
Christiane, merci pour le compliment. Je vais attendre pour connaître de votre réussite.
Steve, I think the same that Mónica about our help with spanish bread, but you dont belive that she says about me. She is better than me
Carmen, I think both you and Mònica are being modest!
It looks great . I will definitely be trying it out. Thanks
Steve, here in Galicia (NW of Spain) corn bread is very tradittional , and never, never sweet! Althought sometimes it contains raisins, it´s always eaten with the main courses, specially in summer with grilled fresh sardines.
Great blog, by the way!
Oscar, thanks for your kind words about the blog. Grilled fresh sardines with corn bread sounds like a great combination. I’ll have to try it soon.