this charming manadama

For some reason, the idea of Anadama bread has been stuck in my head lately. My friend Jessica once told me that her mom used to make it on occasion, and that I should try it. It's a traditional New England bread made with flour, cornmeal, and molasses. And I'm a sucker for anything with cornmeal and molasses, so really the choice was an easy one for me.

Anadama shows up as the first recipe in the BBA Challenge, something that I'd love to be a part of, but don't currently have the money to invest in the book and all the needed ingredients. Some day, some day...

Anyway, I had molasses laying around from the Yorkshire Parkin extravaganza, and I've still got some stone milled corn meal (from the Cedar Creek Grist Mill) in the freezer. I used the BBA formula, with a promise to myself that I will buy the book as soon as I can.

There are no pictures to accompany the bread, because it's really nothing special to look at. But it did come out very well. I love how molasses is both sweet and savory. The bread can go with sharp cheddar at lunch just as well as apricot jam for breakfast. If I make it again, I may confine it to savory by adding a bit of rye and caraway. For some reason my tongue tells me that those additions should happen. We'll see.

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A note on the name. Anadama is supposedly a variant on the phrase "Anna, damn her." Some folklore thing. Like there was this guy with a wife named Anna, who either made really awesome bread or wouldn't make him any bread at all, depending on whom you ask. I don't buy it; the whole thing sounds silly to me.

The Queen is Bread, Boys

This Christmas, I really wanted to make Panettone. However, I do not have a stand mixer, and the prospect of mixing a rich dough by hand was quite intimidating. My coworker Alexiis told me to just go for it; he said the kneading was going to be a pain, but it would be fun.

Well, I opted for something a little more like Stollen than Panettone (I adapted a formula from Peter Reinhart's All Purpose Holiday Bread, Crust & Crumb version).

I upped the butter just a bit, to 25%, and added 10% almond meal, swapped in 25% whole wheat flour, and added a good hit of cardamom. I splurged and used fresh yeast (the yeast alone cost $8!!) just because I feel like fresh yeast is fancy. But I've been reading opinions on fresh yeast, and I think next time I'll opt out.

I also bought some pretty nice butter, as opposed to the grocery store brand: Kerry Gold, from Ireland. The fat content of European butters is usually a bit higher. I'm not sure about Kerry's fat content, but it is a cultured butter, so that adds a nice zip, along with the buttermilk used.

This formula uses equal parts buttermilk and eggs for the hydration, with the buttermilk used as an overnite refrigerated preferment. Here's the sponginess, along with the mise for the final dough:

The bowl of fruit back there is a combo of golden raisins, chopped figs, and chopped apricots. They soaked overnite in a mix of DiSaronno, vanilla, and a few drops of orange oil.

Here's the dough, after a good workout of kneading, ready for the butter to get pounded in. You can see little black specks of freshly ground cardamom in the dough. And speaking of pounding the butter in, I made a silly video.



Got the butter in, folded in the fruit, set aside for bulk fermentation, then got the whole lot shaped into six 250g loaves, two 800g "nanterre" style loaves, and a little 100g mini batarde (for myself!). For the Stollen shout out, the loaves have a line of marzipan running down the length, and each section of the nanterres have a ball of marzipan tucked inside.













I brushed the loaves with an amaretto flat icing. Probably the best bread I've ever made! Very regal, I'd say. They all went out to people for Christmas gifts, and I sent one of the large loaves back to my mom. She said the little bit of marzipan reminded her of a sweet she used to like when she was a little girl. How nice.