Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 11:04:18 -0800
From: Mike MacGregor (macg@edm.trlabs.ca)
Anadama Bread
Modified version of a recipe from "The Garden Way Bread Book"
by Ellen Foscue Johnson.
1 cup skim milk or low fat soymilk
1 cup water
1 cup corn meal
3 Tb. apple sauce
1/2 cup molasses
2 Tb. dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 tsp. sugar or honey
2 tsp. salt
5.5 cups (roughly) flour
1 cup raisins
Bring the milk and 1 cup water to a boil in a large saucepan.
Take off the heat, sprinkle in the corn meal, and stir in with
a whisk or fork. Stir in the apple sauce and molasses. Cool
to lukewarm.
Dissolve the yeast in the half cup warm water with the sweetener.
When it's bubbly, add the cornmeal mixture, salt and half of the
flour. It should be thick, but still beatable. Beat 5 minutes
with an electric mixer (that's right - no kneading; this is a batter
bread).
I had to add another cup of warm water at this point, but I generally
need more water in my baking than the recipes call for, I think because
it's so dry here, the flour dehydrates.
Stir in the raisins, and gradually add the rest of the flour, beating
with a large spoon or dough hook. Add flour until the sponge starts
to pull away from the sides of the bowl. If you use whole wheat flour,
leave it a little sticky, or the loaf will be too dry.
Cover the bowl with a damp cloth, a let it rise until double. Then
stir it down with a spoon, a let it rise a second time if you want
a finer texture. Stir down and divide into two non-stick loaf pans.
You may need to press the loaves into the corners.
Preheat oven to 350 deg. F. Cover the pans and let rise to the top
of the pans. Bake 40 to 45 minutes until brown, but don't quite have
a hollow sound when you tap the pan on the bottom. Remove from pans
and bake 5 minutes on the rack to crisp the crust. Cool on a rack.
I used half whole wheat and half unbleached flour and got a
dense, grainy loaf. The sponge rose really well - I wonder
whether the apple sauce helps the yeast, where oil would slow
it down - anyone have comments on this? Could apple sauce
be used to start the yeast instead of sugar? It might also work
to substitute apple or some other fruit stew for the molasses.
I suspect this recipe would work well in a bread machine if you
cut it in half; I'll try that next time. BTW - this is one of my
favorite cookbooks. There are lots of interesting recipes, organized
into months of the year in almanac form. I found this recipe easy to
modify for low fat, and suspect many of the others would be easy to
change too.
kwvegan vegan