Cornell Bread Recipe: Have You Tried It?

Not everything on this site is comics-centric, you'll note. Today, I'm wondering how many people today are familiar with Dr. Clive McCay's "Cornell Triple-Rich Flour Formula" bread. I first came across it in the 1967 printing of Joy of Cooking and have experimented with it off and on since. This week, it's "on" again.

Here's the deal: McCay experimented with rats to find a method of bread-baking that would provide a loaf that basically supplied nutrients needed for life. (He sweetly paid tribute to those rats in his publication of the recipe.) And it's pretty simple.

In the bottom of each cup of flour that you measure for whatever bread recipe it is that you use, put one tablespoon of soy flour, one tablespoon of dry milk, and one teaspoon of wheat germ. That's it. The result is a heavier loaf, and I hadn't tried it recently with my breadmaker.

However.

I tried it Sunday with a quickbread recipe. That's one that doesn't use yeast to raise the dough. So it's easy and, yes, quick. Moreover, I used a recipe that already involved wheat germ, so all I had to add was the dry milk and the soy flour. It came out good enough -- but unexciting. Later this week, I'm going to try adding currants and diced dried apple. I like having a fast snack that's actually nourishing; we shall see.