The New Year is here and tomorrow is already Three Kings Day. I have lots of culinary ideas to liven up my kitchen this year, which is sure to be a good one for all good Hivers. As always, at home we enter the new year looking forward to eating fluffy things, hehe. You see, we do enjoy eating bread from time to time, but we can't eat the kind they make in bakeries because it gives us heartburn. So here I share with you my first recipe of the New Year: my homemade crunchy cornbread, which crumb is so soft you won't believe it.
I have a few crazy ideas, such as how I could make the roscón that I will share with my good friends tomorrow; I just need to not go to bed too late watching marathon series, so I can get up early and have the roscón ready before nightfall. I didn't get up early today either; it's a luxury I'm giving myself for these few days of January when I'm enjoying a short but substantial vacation--, but early enough to make the cornbread my husband asked me to make.
I hadn't made this bread for a while, perhaps a couple of years, so the shape was a little funny, but the smell... Oh, delicious! The texture and taste were also a dream. I really missed it.
Cornbread is probably of Mesoamerican origin and has existed for about 7,000 years. You'll see that cornbread is very Mexican, very American, very African, hehe. Venezuelan? Well, let's see, the cornbread sold in bakeries and consumed in my country is more like fluffy bread than cake. The most popular recipes for cornbread are, perhaps, the ones we call batter bread, which results in a even more cake like texture.
Surely, you have seen the American recipe, which even has buttermilk in its preparation, so it looks more like a cake than a bread. In a couple of days, I'm supposed to make the Galician recipe (pan de millo), which preferment takes two hours, has no sugar, is prepared with hot water, and has more corn flour than wheat flour.
With this recipe, you'll see what a crispy crust and soft crumb..
Enough margarine to grease the baking pan and corn flour to sift over the pan and over the loaf of raw bread.
First of all, let's process the corn flour in the blender for a couple of minutes until it gets almost as fine as the wheat flour.
To make the preferment, we'll use all the milk, sugar, and yeast, plus 2 or 3 tablespoons of wheat flour, and if you want, 1 or 2 tablespoons of fine corn flour.
In less than half an hour, the pre-baking mix will be fluffy.
In the bowl of the preferment, pour all the remaining ingredients, except the margarine, which we'll integrate later.
Knead for five minutes or so. The dough is sticky. Not to worry; it'll get softer and manageable.
After 5 minutes of kneading, you will be able to form a ball. Let it rest for half an our with the lid on. Then add the margarine and knead until it's fully incorporated into the dough.
Then form a ball and let it rest for an hour or until it doubles in size. Corn flour dough is heavier than wheat flour dough and takes a little longer than expected to rise.
To shape our loaf of bread, we'll not need to sift flour on the counter. We simply flatten the dough with our hands and then fold the edges towards the center clockwise twice.
Then we'll turn it over and seal the bottom with our hands...
...massaging gently until it is as round as possible.
I used the 28 cm x 22 cm rectangular pan, for this, I greased it well with enough margarine.
Then we take some unprocessed flour and spread it in the greased pan and on the raw loaf of bread.
With the help of a pair of scissors, make two cross cuts on the surface of the bread. That's where I overdid it a little bit, hehe. So the bread opened up a little too much while baking...
I used my electric oven with up and down heat. Let the bread bake for 40 minutes at 300°F.
...but it was good, since it baked faster and got a good crust.
It was really soft inside.
This is the kind of cornbread you can eat with sweet or savory spreads. I served it with a spread made of homemade aioli, avocado, tuna, and spring onion.
Is there any type of bread that you particularly like?
Do you make it at home or buy it?
🖤
