The Cornbread Gospels (8 page)

• • • • • • • • • •

Most Northerners will tell you they love cornbread. And they do. If their love is gentle, accepting, it’s no less sincere for not being the red-hot passion you find in the South. A Northerner is receptive to trying new cornbreads: You’ll hear a Yankee say, “Oh, you add grated apples and maple syrup to yours? And sesame seeds? That sounds good.” (This would be versus, “Listen, my great-grandmother Ella Roberts Mayfield made it
this way, my grandmaw Anna Lee Souder made it this way, and my mama, bless her soul, made it this way.
And
they all used this very same skillet. Now do you really think I’d
profane
my great-grandmother’s skillet by adding
apples
?”)

Why is Northern cornbread-love so laissez-faire (not counting that of Rhode Islanders, who are almost as fanatical about their particular cornbread, Jonnycake—
pages 224
–
299
—as Southerners are)?

“Because,” I can almost hear the deafening Southern response, “their cornbread isn’t as good in the first place!”

But that, my friends, is not true. Northern cornbread
is
as good. “Oh,
good
,” my Kentuckian friend Ronni Lundy will say dismissively, “Sure it’s good. It’s just not
real
cornbread.”

I say it
is
real. Northern cornbreads have their own purpose, history, and raison d’être.

Take a look at
pages 34
–
36
, for the differences between the two regions’ cornbreads. Generally, Northern cornbread is sweeter (like Vermont Maple–Sweetened Cornbread,
page 54
). It uses a larger proportion of wheat flour in addition to cornmeal (see Durgin-Park–Style Cornbread,
page 41
) and is almost never composed of straight cornmeal. And, yes, sometimes Yankees add ingredients that would make Great-Grandmother Mayfield get up out of her grave and smack you (see Quasi-Colonial Cornbread with Apples,
page 45
).

Northern cornbread today is something of a treat, a specialty: not exactly a sweet tea bread (like, say, banana bread) but not a daily go-with-anything-and-everything staple bread, either. It’s natural to play with specialty breads, which are by definition non-staples; to fool with ingredients and add-ins (as in Cornmeal-Oatmeal Cranberry-Orange Loaf,
page 60
). Even when cornbread
was
a daily bread to New Englanders, back in colonial days, it was as Rye’n’Injun (
page 162
), a yeast-risen corn-rye-wheat bread that bears no resemblance to what most of us now think of as cornbread.

All cornbreads owe their existence to Native American foodways. When Europeans made their way to this continent’s shores, the newcomers mixed what was familiar to them with the ingredients and methods they found here.

The newcomers who settled in the Northeast were like-minded people of English or Dutch stock. They came in search of religious freedom, and they tended to live clustered in communities. They arrived to make self-sufficient settlements, not fortunes; and to raise families. They were carpenters, farmers, ministers, leaders, and women and children, who added what has often been called “a civilizing influence.” (By contrast, the first newcomers to the South, mostly male, were in search of fortunes to be made; and, generally independent-minded, they tended to spread out more, not settle in communities.)

The early colonists in the Northeast, with their literally Puritan mindset, did not suffer
huge gaps between social classes among themselves. They did, however, regard their new home and its native people with incredible chauvinism. European goods and ingredients were superior to anything the strange, primitive savages might have to offer, in any area—from general worldview, to manners and customs, to foodstuffs.

The Pilgrims crossed the sea with the seeds of their own European staple grains, wheat and rye. But when these crops failed, rather than starve they turned to corn, a gift from the native people. Plymouth Colony governor William Bradford attributed this generosity to the divine: “And sure it was God’s good providence that we found this corne, for else we know not how we should have done.”

But the Dutch and English newcomers remained, if only in their minds, strongly and persistently convinced that wheat was superior. Yankees kept trying, doggedly, to make breads and desserts (“puddings”) from the new grain in the same way they’d used the old-world grains. This was impossible: Although corn and wheat are both staple grains (along with rice, barley, and others), each has its own culinary qualities and attributes. Cornmeal was and is
cornmeal
, not substitute wheat (mostly because corn has no gluten, the protein structure in wheat, on which European baking traditions rest).

But that didn’t stop those stubborn Yankees from trying. Whenever possible they cut the cornmeal with precious, expensive flour (see “Thirded” Colonial Cornbread,
page 42
) brought over from across the sea. (Hence the fact that in general, to this day, Yankee cornbreads contain a much higher percentage of flour than do Southern cornbreads.) Their tastes in baked goods also dictated an ample scoop, dollop, or pour of sweetening. The latter could be accommodated with relative ease: The Pilgrims quickly learned, from their native brethren, the trick of tapping maple sap and boiling it down for syrup.

What other factors influenced New Englanders’ cornbreads? The climate. Which crops grew most quickly in the shorter growing season? Which would keep best through the long, cold winters? Pumpkins and winter squash were the transitional crops, and the summer’s fruits were dried to last all winter. The only fresh fruits to last into winter were apples, which kept relatively well. However, the weather did have its upsides. Refrigeration was possible. For most of the year, even in hot summers, ice, cut in huge blocks from rivers and lakes, was stored in caves and shelters, where it was used to keep ingredients cool.

The weather affected both ingredients and cooking methods. Icehouses delayed milk’s souring; thus, in the North, “sweet” milk or even cream (as in Sweet Cream and Honey Cornbread,
page 47
) often replaced the buttermilk usually used in the hot, humid South. Traditions in both places are largely followed to this day. Also, in a cool climate you
want
continual, steady warmth indoors throughout much of the year. Yankee cornbreads are thus usually baked longer than Southern ones, at a slightly lower temperature. And steaming bread
for hours (see Classic Boston Brown Bread,
page 62
)—a practice unthinkable in the already steamy South—made great sense in colder climates. Slow cooking, whether by oven or stove, was a major advantage.

But any cornbread framework is necessarily loose. As in all things cornbread, there are exceptions to the rule. Yankee “Spider” Cornbread with a Custard Layer (
page 50
) does go into a hot Southern-friendly skillet; and some Northern cornbreads do use buttermilk, just as some Southern ones use a bit of flour and the slightest touch of sweetening.

When immigration brings human beings of different traditions together, their influence on each other is inevitable. It was impossible for the Pilgrims to stay the same; they had to evolve into something new. Here’s how the poet Stephen Vincent Benét described it:

And those who came were resolved to be Englishmen.

Gone to the world’s end, but English every one.

And they ate the white corn kernels, parched in the sun
,

And they knew it not, but they’d not be English again.

For Englishmen (and women) became Americans, and America was soon no longer “the world’s end” but “home.” And cornmeal, once viewed with suspicion and scorn, gradually became an ingredient so beloved, and so identified with America, that in 1776 Benjamin Franklin wrote in its impassioned defense to a British newspaper, “Indian corn is one of the most agreeable and wholesome grains in the world; its green ears roasted are a delicacy beyond expression; and a
johny
, or
hoe-cake
, hot from the fire, is better than a Yorkshire muffin.”

Thus does Yankee cornbread quietly offer its own gospel, leaving the preaching and conversion to those who have already partaken of its goodness.

M
AKES
9
SQUARES

The bread most associated with Boston is, of course, Boston Brown Bread (
page 62
). But at Durgin-Park, the restaurant most associated with Boston, the first bread to reach the table is cornbread—thick, golden squares of it, rough, crumbly, slightly grainy, moist, sweet, almost cakelike.

Durgin-Park,
the
ultimate old-school New England restaurant, has been located in Boston’s Faneuil Hall Market Place since 1827. In all that time, incredibly, it’s had only four owners. Stalwart Yankee dishes such as chowder, apple pan dowdy, New England boiled dinner, and at least three famous cornmeal-based dishes—cornbread, johnnycakes (with an H, unlike in Rhode Island, where an H is grounds for lynching), and Indian pudding—remain on the menu, unchanged.

When chef Tommy Ryan came on the job forty-three years ago, “Cornbread Helen” (aka Helen Goodman) had already been working “a good twenty-five, thirty years.” He learned the recipe from her.

Numerous recipes floating around (in books, on the Internet) purport to be “the
real
Durgin-Park cornbread.” All have more flour than cornmeal, are extremely sweet, and have almost no added fat. This is my take. Since there is so little fat, you
must
use at least whole milk. Half-and-half is even tastier.

Vegetable oil cooking spray

2 cups unbleached white flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

¾ teaspoon salt

1 cup stone-ground yellow cornmeal

½ cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tablespoon melted butter

1½ cups whole milk or half-and-half

1.
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Spray a 9-inch square pan with oil.

2.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt into a large bowl. Stir in the cornmeal. Set aside while, in a smaller bowl, you whisk together the sugar, eggs, melted butter, and milk.

3.
Combine these two mixtures, stirring just enough to combine the ingredients, then transfer the batter into the prepared pan.

4.
Bake the cornbread until it is deeply golden, about 30 minutes. Cool for a few minutes, and cut into squares. Serve, still hot from the oven.

M
AKES ABOUT
12
SQUARES

When the British came to America they were pining for wheat. In order to stretch their thin and dear wheat supplies, they made yeast doughs of one third wheat flour, one third cornmeal, and one third rye flour. The method was called “thirding,” and it was used for both yeast-risen and “quick” breads (like pancakes).

This bread, though contemporary in its leavening agents, is thirded like breads of long ago, and it is can’t-stop-eating-it delicious a few minutes out of the oven, with a little butter. It’s still good that same day, goes quite nicely with vegetable soup or stew, and can be split, toasted, and gussied up with sharp Cheddar cheese melted on each half. The next day, when it dries out a little, crumble it and save it for bread pudding, stuffing, or—my favorite—French toast.

To make a moister bread, add ¼ cup sour cream whisked with ¼ teaspoon baking soda to the wet ingredients.

Vegetable oil cooking spray

¾ cup stone-ground yellow cornmeal

¾ cup whole-grain rye flour

¾ cup whole wheat pastry flour

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons butter or mild vegetable oil

3 tablespoons blackstrap molasses

2 eggs

1¼ cups milk, measured into a 4-cup measure

1.
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Spray an 8-by-11-inch baking pan with oil.

2.
Sift together the cornmeal, rye flour, whole wheat pastry flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl. Set aside.