The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1907-02-16
CORN BREAD.

How many OF the thousands OF
farmers wives know what good corr
bread is? How many can make it,
how many have made it, how many
understand what are the necessary
ingredients for constructing this de-
licious morsel Of course, all will
reply, "why everybody knows all
about corn bread it is one of the
commonest things seen on the farmers S
table," One kind, perhaps, but it is
questionable if most of Our patrons in
the middle western States are not
ignorant of the real thing, called
"corn pone" in the south. The diff
fculty lies, not in the making, but in
procuring the right kind of meal.
Don't imagine you can make the best
corn bread out of the meal from the
big, coarse corn raised in such States
as Kansas, Illinois and Indiana, and
ground in the modern process mills
to be found everywhere. You can't
do it. There is only one kind of
meal that will make the best corn
bread, the kind that was common in
pioneer days and for many years
afterward in all the States. It is
ground on slow running water mill
from corn that has been we'll dried,
the little end of the ear shelled off for
the chickens or pigs, the rotten grains
carefully eliminated and the corn run
through a fan mill. Before being
made into bread, the meal is sifted
through a wire sieve, the meshes OF
which are not too fine. Then if good
bread is not produced it is the fault
of the cook.
Thus you will see, you must begin
with the right kind of corn, this must
be ground in the right kind of mill,
it must be put through the right sift-
ing process, and the cook must do
the rest. Don't put sugar in it, on
your life. The use of sugar in max
ing any form of corn bread should be
made a felony. Now, there are still
places in the United States where it
is possible to get the corn essential,
mills of the right sort near by to
slowly make it into meal, and the
cooks at hand who understand the
business. But these localities are
comparatively rare. Somebody found
an old-fashioned water-mill in south
ern Indiana county the other day and
the publication of the fact created
sensation. We doubt whether there
is single one in Illinois or Ohio.
Kansas, too, we fear, despite. her
enormous crops, and progressive ag-
riculture and possession of the peer
less Coburn, has forgotten, CT is about
to forget, one of the greatest luxuries.
But, fortunately, there are some
places where the right conditions
linger. In the mountains of Virginia,
North Carolina, Tennessee and Ken
lucky, the blessed old water mills
may yet be found. Rude structures,
hid behind a rocky ledge, near a tur-
bulent and tinkling little stream,
whese crystalline water flows through
pebbly channels in sylvan shades.
More than one of these ideal mills
may be found under the shadows of
the Big Smoky, near the recesses of
Bald Knob, in the mountain fastnesses
at the headwaters on Sandy. Hard
by, the untaxed juice of the corn
flows from modest and retiring stills.
There you can get the right kind OF
corn meal, and only there.
But they don't bring this meal to
town. The town-raised persons
taste is too vitiated to appreciate it.
When he eats corn bread at all with
his oleomargarine or canned soup, he
wants the roller mill product, which
suggested the idea of sawdust break
fast food to a Battle Creek Yankee.
Even farmers, thousands of them,
living in the sections that produce
the countless millions of bushels of
corn that Uncle Jim Wilson brags
about, know not corn bread. Let
them ask their fathers and mothers
about it, if they go back forty or fifty
years. There is as much difference
between bread from properly ground
meal and the common meal of COM
merce as there is between Virginia
ham and one of the packing-house
abortions. Unless there is recrud
escence of the water.mill, reverslon
to the old style, which seems impos-
sible, the making of the toothsome
pone will soon become lost art. 1t
will GO to join the many other good
things displaced by this age Of greed
and graft, of adulteration and cheap
limitations. Meantime, we sigh for
the solitudes, where the whitening
blight of modern civilization, with its
canned goods and packing-house
meats, has not yet penetrated, and
where one may
Listen to the water mill
Through the livelong day,
While the clicking of the wheel