Type Bread Place of origin United States of America | Region or state New England | |
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Main ingredients Wheat Flour (sometimes rye flour), cornmeal, molasses Similar Bread, Salt‑rising bread, Eish merahrah, Barmbrack, Balep korkun | ||
Anadama bread recipe in the bread kitchen
Anadama bread is a traditional yeast bread of New England in the United States made with wheat flour, cornmeal, molasses and sometimes rye flour.
Contents
Origin in Rockport, Massachusetts
It is not readily agreed exactly when or where the bread originated, except it existed before 1850 in Rockport, Massachusetts. It is thought to have come from the local fishing community, but it may have come through the Finnish community of local stonecutters.
Near the turn of the 20th century, it was baked by a man named Baker Knowlton on King Street in Rockport, Massachusetts and delivered in a horse-drawn cart to households by men in blue smocks. In the 1940s, a Rockport restaurant owned by Bill and Melissa Smith called The Blacksmith Shop on Mt. Pleasant St. started baking the bread for their restaurant in a small bakery on Main St. They baked about 80 loaves a day until 1956, when they built a modern $250,000 bakery on Pooles Lane. They had 70 employees and 40 trucks which delivered Anadama bread all over New England.
The Anadama bread center of consumption was in Rockport and next-door Gloucester, Massachusetts. It was commercially available from local bakeries widely on Cape Ann from the early 1900s until 1970, when the Anadama Bread Bakery on Pooles Lane in Rockport closed due to Bill Smith's death. For a number of years, it was baked by small local bakeries at breakfast places on Cape Ann.
An apocryphal story told about the origin of the bread goes like this: Every day a local worker would find cornmeal mush in his tin lunch pail, despite asking his wife for an occasional piece of bread. One day, because of weather or other circumstances, he came home just prior to lunch time. His wife, Anna, was out. He sat down and opened his lunch box to find the usual cornmeal mush. He sighed and said, "Anna, damn her," as he resolutely reached for the flour, molasses and yeast which he added to the cornmeal mush. His resulting bread became a local favorite.
Recipe: Put in a large mixing bowl 2 cups boiling water and 1/2 cup cornmeal. Stir thoroughly. Let stand one hour. Add 1/2 cup molasses, 2 teaspoons salt, and 1 tablespoon butter. Put in a small bowl 1/2 cup lukewarm water and 1 package yeast. When dissolved, add to the cornmeal. Stir in 4 1/2 cups flour. Beat thoroughly and let rise until double in bulk. Add enough more flour to make the dough just firm enough to knead. Shape into loaves and put into buttered pans. Let rise until almost double. Bake about 50 minutes at 350°. Makes 2 loaves. White flour will make the most "addictive" Anadama, but experiment with whole wheat, rye and other flours to make more healthful loaves.