Anadama Bread

Even though this blog is about recipes Mom collected over the years, I got a pile of recipes that Dad tore out of newspapers or wrote down from other countries or such.  Somehow I got stuck with Coconut Balls.  Why would I ever in my right mind make that?  Jacob and I both detest coconut. So that recipe will never appear on this blog.  At least I didn't get the recipe for Corn Ice Cream. That was a recipe fail there.

Anyway, Anadama bread.  First seen in Rockport, Massachusetts.  It's characterized by molasses and corn meal.  Sounds tasty, so I was excited to make it.

Anadama Bread--source unknown--written exactly as Dad wrote it down.

Ingredients

1 Cup cold H2O
2/3 Cup corn meal
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbs butter
1/4 Cup molasses

1 Pkg dry yeast
1/2 Cup lukewarm H2O

3 Cups bread flour

Directions

1. Make cornmeal mush.
2. Stir in butter-molasses.

Add yeast in 1/2 Cup H2O 5 min.
Add to mush.
Add flour. 1 cup at a time.
Knead 10 minutes--punch down.
Bake 375 degrees for 45 minutes.

There were a few problems with this recipe.  First, the recipe said to punch the dough down.  But it didn't ever say to let it rise.  So I had to make up how much to let it rise.  Second, it was super wet.  Like VERY wet.  I looked up the recipe online and all the similar recipes said to cook the mush to thicken it.  Since I read that too late, I just had to add a bunch of flour.  But it was still good.  I also had to cook it longer than 45 minutes, because the outside looked great, then I cut into dough.  The slight sweet taste and texture of cornmeal won me over.