Broa
A Portuguese country bread with nothing in common with American cornbread: it is a sourdough, dense, moist and baked for an hour. Cornmeal has no gluten, so rye and wheat must support it. And it needs one more step without which the loaf crumbles: the cornmeal must be scalded with boiling water, so its starch gelatinises and holds the water.
Your own work in that: 0 min.
- Scalding the cornmeal 60 min
- Starter 120 min
- Dough 25 min
- Proving 120 min
- Baking 60 min
Step by step
0 / 8 doneScald the cornmeal with boiling water
Put the cornmeal and salt in a bowl and pour over boiling water, stirring hard with a wooden spoon. You get a thick, hot paste. This step gelatinises the starch — without it the corn cannot bind water and the bread crumbles.
Ingredients: 350 g cornmeal · 450 ml water · 2 tsp salt
A thick paste — only boiling water gelatinises the starch.Cool the paste to lukewarm
Leave the paste for about an hour to cool to 35°C, stirring occasionally. Hot, it would kill the starter instantly — and that is the only leavening in this bread, with nothing to replace it.
Ingredients: 350 g cornmeal · 450 ml water · 2 tsp salt
Make the rye starter
Mix the starter with the rye flour and lukewarm water and leave 2 hours somewhere warm, until visibly risen and bubbling. It is easiest to set it up right after scalding the cornmeal — the paste cools in the meantime. An active starter is a condition here — a corn dough struggles to rise as it is.
Ingredients: 150 g rye starter · 100 g rye flour · 100 ml water
Combine into a very stiff dough
Work the starter and bread flour into the lukewarm corn paste and knead with a wet hand for 10 minutes, right in the bowl. The dough is too dense and sticky for a worktop — not a fault but its nature.
Ingredients: 200 g bread flour · 80 ml water · 50 g cornmeal
Too dense for a worktop — knead wet-handed in the bowl.Shape a dome with wet hands
Shape a tall dome on a tray dusted with cornmeal, smoothing the surface with wet hands. Broa holds its shape through the density of the dough, not gluten, so shape it firmly and do not add flour.
Ingredients: 200 g bread flour · 80 ml water · 50 g cornmeal
Prove two hours
Cover with a cloth and leave 2 hours. The dough rises by half at most, not double — as it should. Fine cracks appear on the surface; that is the sign it is ready to bake. For the last 30 minutes, heat the oven to 240°C.
Ingredients: 350 g cornmeal · 450 ml water · 2 tsp salt
Fine cracks on the surface — time for the oven.Bake an hour at falling temperature
Bake 15 minutes at 240°C, then 45 minutes at 190°C. The hot start makes the crust, the lower heat cooks a very dense interior. The loaf is ready when it sounds hollow tapped underneath.
Ingredients: 350 g cornmeal · 450 ml water · 2 tsp salt
Cool at least four hours
Cool on a rack for at least 4 hours, ideally overnight. Cut warm, broa is gummy and wet inside — it needs time for the corn starch to stabilise. The hardest part of the recipe.
Ingredients: 350 g cornmeal · 450 ml water · 2 tsp salt
Before you start
Not polenta meal
You need finely ground cornmeal, not coarse polenta. Coarse grains do not have time to gelatinise in the scald and stay in the crumb as hard specks that make the bread crumble as you slice it.
What to serve it with
Broa is the bread for caldo verde, for grilled sardines, for feijoada and for lard. Its density and faint corn sweetness go best with rich, salty food.
Several days of freshness
Gelatinised corn starch holds water, so broa stays moist for several days — longer than ordinary wheat bread. Keep it in paper rather than plastic: the crust should stay thick and dry.
