When I’m in the kitchen, following a recipe to a T is not how I like to operate, so I usually say I’m not a very good baker. Since baking is more of a science, and cooking more of an art, you may be assuming that I’m a creative person by nature. This isn’t very true of me at all, or at least it’s not how I would characterize myself. I have a master’s degree in accounting, so now you might be starting to make some entirely different assumptions.
To confuse you even further, I’ll say that the point I’m really trying to get to is about a practice that I don’t believe falls into the category of either science OR art, namely bread baking. It’s both, but it’s also sometimes neither. Sometimes, baking bread is just, well, intuitive.
My first memories of being in the kitchen revolve around my mom teaching me how to knead bread in our home in southern Maine. I remember her showing me exactly how to use the heels of my hands to dig into dough and gently turn it over and over until magically, eventually, the surface became smooth.
In its simplest form, bread is flour, water, some form of yeast and salt. Factually, there is a science behind combining, rising, and baking those basic ingredients, but there is also an art in the methodology you use to perform steps. Other ingredients can be added to enrich bread, the rise can be manipulated (particularly with sourdough, or breads that use wild yeasts), and you can use various shapes and vessels to bake the bread.
What I loved about learning to bake bread as a kid though, and what I still love, is how so much of the art is based on intuition: The feel of the dough as you knead it, the flavors you add, what kind of outcome you want – all of these require a bit of instinct from the baker. It’s in these things where I find that intuitive joy that I don’t often get from making even coziest dinner or the most delicious batch of cookies.
Of all the breads I love to make, one of my most favorites is still the classic Anadama bread recipe out of Marjorie Standish’s “Cooking Down East.” The sweet smell as it bakes brings me right back to my patient mother instilling in me a passion for bread baking, a part of my character that will never waver. I only hope to be able to pass this same passion onto my daughter.
Anadama Bread. Photo by Lindsay Porto
Anadama Bread
Recipe from Marjorie Standish’s “Cooking Down East.”
½ cup cornmeal
½ cup molasses
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons shortening
1 envelope dry yeast
About 6 cups all-purpose flour
Bring 2 cups water to a boil in a medium-size saucepan. Turn the temperature to low and add the cornmeal, slowly. Cook the water and cornmeal together for just a couple of minutes. Stir in the molasses, salt and shortening. Cook together for another 2-3 minutes until ingredients are well mixed.
Turn this mixture into a bowl and allow to cool to lukewarm. In the meantime, dissolve the yeast in 1/4 cup lukewarm water. When the cornmeal-molasses mixture is lukewarm, stir in the dissolved yeast mixture.
Start adding sifted flour. When the mixture makes a stiff dough, turn it out onto a floured surface. Start kneading, adding more flour as needed so it doesn’t stick too much; continue kneading until dough is smooth and glossy.
Place the dough in a large greased bowl. Cover, place in a warm spot and allow dough to rise until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour. Poke the dough down in bowl and allow to rise once more until it is puffy, about another hour. (These times can vary depending on the temperature of your kitchen.)
Turn the dough onto floured surface and add a bit more flour, if it is sticking to the surface. Let the dough relax for about 10 minutes. Divide the dough in half and form into 2 loaves. Place in greased 9 /12- by 5-inch loaf pans. Cover with a towel. Let the dough, now formed loaves, rise a third time until the loaves are about doubled in pans, about 45 minutes.
When the loaves have nearly doubled, preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Bake the loaves for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 325 degrees F and bake for 20 more minutes. The loaves are done when your kitchen smells heavenly, and they sound hollow when you gently tap the tops.
Turn the loaves out of their pans. Butter the tops of the loaves while they are still hot, then cool on a rack.
Lindsay Porto. Photo courtesy of Lindsay Porto
THE COOK: LINDSAY PORTO
“I am a lifelong Mainer currently living in Scarborough with my husband and our infant daughter (who is not yet eating solid foods!). Day to day, I cook for the two of us, but I come from a large family, and we often gather for holidays, birthdays or just Sunday meals, so I am also used to cooking for a crowd. I rarely cook the same dinner meal twice. My husband and I eat a mostly pescatarian diet with a heavy focus on fruits and vegetables, and I make almost everything homemade (e.g. dressings, sauces, etc.) I am always collecting recipes from food blogs, cookbooks, social media, and of course, the Food section of the Maine Sunday Telegram; I love to sit down on Friday nights and draw from these recipes to plan our meals for the next week.”
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