Anadama Bread

Last weekend I opened up one of the cupboard doors in the kitchen to have a whole pile of things come tumbling out onto the floor. It was one of those drop everything (literally) moments where I decided that it needed to be cleaned out right then and there. It didn't take long for me to discover I had three containers of dry mustard buried in there. If I can't see that they are in there, I just go out and buy another one. Then there were three bags of heirloom beans and it didn't take long to figure out that there were baked beans on the horizon. A simple pot of beans to use up some pantry staples sounded like a good plan. Something easy for dinner. Soon, those hopes of a simple meal disappeared. You see, David grew up in Maine where baked beans are not taken lightly. Apparently I was treading on hundreds of years of tradition with a simple batch of baked beans. Names of foods I had never heard of were flying across our kitchen, something about red hot dogs and what I thought was Damn Banana Bread. "Damn what", I asked?  Now I am going to have to spend the day kneading and baking bread? Turns out that Anadama Bread is probably the original no knead bread. You mix it all together, put it in the bread pans and let it rise for 3-4 hours. It takes a long time, but all it does is sit there. The active time is probably 10 minutes or less. So, I breathed a sigh of relief. Turns out it is possible to have a simple pot of beans and some homemade bread without a whole lot of work.

Anadama Bread

adapted from Simply Recipes

1/2 cup cornmeal

1/2 cup molasses

3 tbsp butter (softened)

1 tbsp salt

2 1/4 teaspoons dry yeast

4 1/2 cups bread flour

Grease or butter two 5x9 loaf pans. Slowly pour two cups of boiling hot water over the cornmeal, whisking constantly to avoid lumps. Set in a warm spot for 30 minutes. Add molasses, butter, and salt to the cornmeal. Stir to combine. Mix yeast with  1/2 cup of warm water (should feel slightly warmer than body temperature). Let sit for 5 minutes, until it turns foamy. Stir the yeast into the cornmeal mixture. Stir in flour, 1/2 cup at a time until it is all incorporated and no dry flour is visible. Use a spoon to divide the very wet dough mixture between the two loaf pans. Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let rise 3-4 hours, until doubled in volume. 

Heat the oven to 350°F and bake the bread for 45-50 minutes, until bread is brown and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Let the loaves cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then turn them out onto racks to cool completely. Serve slathered in butter with baked beans.