Manna from Mamsie

I met a very interesting lady recently at a friend's house. Quite a colourful character who told stories that would make one fall in love with African history, culture and heritage. She entertained us for a while with her childhood stories and experiences - I felt like I'd known her forever. The highlight of our conversation though was when she told us of her family bread recipe. As she gave a detailed account of the method, she would occasionally pause to describe how soft and tasty it is...she pulled a face and closed her eyes as if she had had a mouthful moments before. I had to try it out myself so I tried my best to memorize everything she said. I winged the rest and was quite delighted with the outcome.

Ingredients

• 2 cups maize meal
• 2 cups plain flour
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 tablespoons oil
• 1 packet intant yeast
• Approximately 1 cup water

Method


You first need to make uphuthu with the maize meal. Add maize to approximately 1.5 cups of boiling water in a large pot and use a fork to mix. Add approximately ½ cup of water and continue mixing – it should make little balls or crumbs. Add more water but only a little at a time while mixing. Make sure that you don't add too much water. Reduce heat to low and cover with the lid on. The steam will cook it though
Keep checking it every 5 minutes or so. You only need to cook it for 30minutes as it still needs to be baked/steam. Put it in a bowl and allow to cool

• Add the flour,sugar, salt and yeast to the cooked maize meal and mix wel
• Add the oil and about 1/2 a cup of water and mix with your hands
• You need to keep adding water until the dough is stiff but easy enough to work with
• Kneed for approximately 30 minutes (I only managed about 7 minutes!)
• Form the dough into a bread-like shape, place in a greased pan, cover and place in a warm spot for it to rise for approximately 20 minutes
• Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200 ̊c for about 45 minutes