Frugal favorite

Anybody will tell you that "pao doce," "sweet bread," was the everyday bread of the Portuguese in Hawaii.

Unless they’re on the far side of 80, had a Portuguese neighbor in childhood and remember what used to come out of those beehive-shaped masonry ovens day after day.

And it wasn’t sweet bread, a rich loaf loaded with butter and eggs. Who could afford that except at Easter and Christmas and maybe somebody’s Saint’s Day?

No, the everyday loaf of the Portuguese was plainer: "pao branco," "white bread," but also called milk bread — round, high, golden loaves with slightly crackly crusts and tender, moist insides. Until the 1960s you could buy "Portuguese bread" in any neighborhood bakery in the islands; it’s all but disappeared now.

But there was an even more frugal loaf, "broa," cornmeal bread, the truly forgotten bread of the Portuguese.

Nonagenarian Alice Peters of Laupahoehoe was "the bread lady" of the Hamakua Coast, having baked thousands of sweet-bread loaves for charities to sell as fundraisers.

When I interviewed her a couple of years ago, she recalled how her mother, an exceptional baker, would make broa. "Oh, yes, we made all kinds of breads. Today they only know about pao doce. Ho! I never heard about broa long time."

A BIT crumbly, grainy, intensely corn-flavored, broa was the choice when the cupboard was bare or dinner was a hefty soup. The rustic preparation perfectly complemented the soups that were the main meal of the Portuguese twice and sometimes three times a day.

"Bread fills in the corners," my grandmother Ida Sylva Duarte of Iao Valley, Maui, used to say.

Her teenage diaries, scribbled in pencil in school exercise books, begin every day with the notation "Baked b." After bearing 10 children, my tiny great-grandmother spent most of her days in a sickbed. Grandma, the youngest daughter, was charged with the daily chores.

She recalled the progression of her day: Feed Daddy and the older boys their "papas" (bread in hot milk or milky coffee) or "sopas" (soupy cornmeal gruel), shape the bread, pick vegetables, start the day’s soup and head out to the "forno," a wood-burning oven.

Typical of the division of labor in Portuguese households, her father or brothers would have built the short, hot fire that heated the oven; she would have made the potato-based leavening and prepared the dough.

Each morning, she would scrape out the embers, mop the ashes out of the oven, test the temperature with a handful of flour (how rapidly it browned or burned was the measure of its heat), shovel the loaves onto the floor of the oven and monitor the baking. This was half a day’s work, and the ovens were some distance from the house and often shared with another family.

BUT THE women got their own back: Bread became a form of currency. Japanese and Chinese elders often tell me they used to barter for bread with the Portuguese neighbor or pay cash for it.

"They taught us Japanese to eat bread," said Kenji Ishimoto of Mililani.

Most families baked at least every other day because these low-fat loaves, without the benefit of modern-day extenders in the mix, would go rock-hard in a day. Old Portuguese laugh about "stone bread," which had to be dipped in soup before it could be broken with the teeth.

Grandma often cooked "milho," a cornmeal mush that was served in both sweet and savory guises.

But she never made broa for me. I guess it was already forgotten.

Bake your own broa in rounds or loaves

Some years ago I was invited by chef Alan Wong to experiment with baking bread in the forno, the wood-burning oven at Hawaii’s Plantation Village in Waipahu.

Then pastry chef Mark Okumura and I collaborated on the yeast-raised cornbread called broa. This bread is customarily made in rounds, either free-form or baked in cake pans, but I also like to form conventional oblong loaves. Broa rises only modestly and is best within a day or two of baking.

BROA (PORTUGUESE CORNBREAD)

1-1/2 cups white or yellow cornmeal
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
1 cup boiling water
4 teaspoons olive oil
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 cup lukewarm water
1-1/2 to 2 cups flour

Pulverize cornmeal in blender or food processor until very fine. Combine 1 cup cornmeal, salt and boiling water; mix until smooth. Stir in 3 teaspoons olive oil, spread in large mixing bowl and let cool until warm.

Dissolve yeast and sugar in lukewarm water; set aside until yeast doubles in volume. Stir into cornmeal mixture. Working right in the bowl, knead in remaining cornmeal and 1 cup flour.

Form dough into ball and place in greased bowl. Cover with towel and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk.

Coat 2 8-inch round cake pans with remaining olive oil. Turn dough onto floured board and knead 5 minutes, adding flour until the dough is firm but not stiff (you might not use all the flour). Divide into two and shape into discs. Alternatively, form by hand into one or two compact ovals (pat into thick oval on floured board, fold in and pinch sides and ends, press to expel bubbles). Let shaped dough rise, covered loosely, in cake pans or on cookie sheet, until doubled in bulk. Bake in a 350-degree oven for 40 minutes or until golden.

Makes 2 meal-size loaves or 1 larger loaf.

Approximate nutritional analysis per slice (based on 12 slices): 170 calories, 4 g fat, 1 g saturated fat, no cholesterol, 300 mg sodium, 30 g carbohydrate, 2 g fiber, 1 g sugar, 4 g protein

Nutritional analysis by Joannie Dobbs, Ph.D., C.N.S.