Cornbread [MERGED TOPIC]

[tryska]

i prefer a lightly sweet cornbread. not corn-muffin sweet, but just sweet enough that you don't taste baking soda.

[tejon]

Thank you, ruthcooks. Since I have absolutely no ties to the south, I can admit I really prefer sweet cornbread

[fifi]

ruthcooks, thanks for that sweet cornbread recipe. Would you be willing to put it in RecipeGullet? Since it is an heirloom recipe, a preamble regarding its origin would preserve the history as well.

I actually like the sweeter, lighter texture bread on occasion. Would I eat it with chili or pinto beans? Probably not. But I do enjoy it as a side to, for instance, a "leftover meat" dinner salad with a tart vinagrette. We used to do this a lot for weekday dinners when my son lived with me. But, I have to confess that I defaulted to Jiffy Mix muffins because I really didn't have a recipe I was crazy about.

[bleachboy]

This is my grandmother's cornbread recipe. As far as I'm concerned, it's unparallelled.

2 eggs

1 cup flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. soda

3 tbsp. sugar

3/4 tsp. salt

2/3 cup yellow corn meal

1 cup buttermilk

1/4 cup butter

Beat the eggs. Sift the dry ingredients and add alternately with the buttermilk to the egg mixture. Add the melted butter. Lightly grease an 8 X 8 Pyrex pan (or black skillet -- I prefer the skillet). Pour batter into pan and bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes (or until golden brown on top.)

Note: Cornbread batter just needs to be lightly stirred together---but NOT mixed with an electric mixer.

Also, if you have some cornbread leftovers, place in foil and re-heat in oven the next day.

[tryska]

sweet cornbread goes good with barbecue.

[Wholemeal Crank]

I prefer my honey corn muffins...I've never tried them as a large pan loaf, but they make fine mini-loaves (6x3 size pans). The recipe is here:

http://www.well.com/user/debunix/recipes/H...ornMuffins.html

I like them for breakfast, with chili, with tomato-basil soup....

[ruthcooks]

Recipe posted as requested. Enjoy.

[andiesenji]

Here is the recipe for the fermented corn mash cornbread I promised.

UNCLE "HAT'S" SOURED CORNBREAD

This "receipt" is from Uncle "Hat" Elam an itenerant Pentecostal preacher who hiked through the Appalachians and Ozarks bringing the "Word of God" to the hill folks, many who supported themselves by cooking 'shine.

(Uncle Hat was named Hatshepsut by his mother who did not realize this Pharaoh was a woman- she just liked the name having first heard it from a newsreader/traveling vendor of household items and books and then reading it in a book about Egypt.)

Uncle Hat's sister Meratmeri (another Egyptian name) married one of my great-uncles.

Uncle Hat remained a batchelor until he was near 60 and traveled to the Florida panhandle to bring back a young relative who had run away from a military school in Albany, Georgia, and who was hiding out in the Florida woods. In Tallahassee Uncle Hat stayed at a boarding house run by a widow "of a certain age" and fell in love first with her pineapple upside-down cake and then with her. He courted her for almost a year and finally convinced her to marry him. They enjoyed 37 years of married bliss until they died within a few months of each other -he at 98 and she at 91.

As Uncle Hat told it, sometimes he would arrive at a 'stead in the mountains and the family would not have enough cornmeal to make enough bread for company. The man of the house would go off into the woods and return with a pot of "workin" mash and this would be incorporated into the cornbread to stretch it so there would be enough for the family and for company. Uncle Hat felt it was so tasty he did the unthinkable when he returned home and invaded the kitchen and experimented under the eye of his mother and sisters until he worked out the following recipe and for the rest of his life he was proud to make the cornbread for every company meal and also when visiting family and friends.

(other than that he would not set foot in a kitchen)

Pour 3 cups spring water into a 2 or 3 quart pot, add 1-1/2 teaspoons salt and bring it to a rolling boil. Gradually stir in 1-1/2 cups white water-ground cornmeal and cook till it is a medium-thick mush.

Remove from heat and immediately stir in 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/4 cup of lard (or solid shortening such as Crisco - don't use butter) and enough additional cornmeal to make a fairly stiff batter. It should not be dry, but the (wooden) spoon should stand up in the batter.

Pour the hot batter into a scalded glazed crock (or ceramic bowl) and cover with a (glass or ceramic plate or glass or stainless steel pot lid) but do not seal it tight, (be sure to scald the bowl and the lid).

Allow to set at room temperature for two to four days, until it ferments - this goes quicker in the summer. It should look bubbly and have a distinct aroma and smell faintly of alcohol. You won't have to remove the lid to scent it, the gases should be able to escape from the pot, thus the loose fitting lid. Caution: If you cover this tightly, the pressure can blow the lid off the crock and will shatter a glass jar.

At the end of this time, stir together 1 cup buttermilk with 1/2 cup fresh cornmeal and 1/2 teaspoon fresh bakin' "sody", stir into the 'workin' mixture.

Heat oven to 400, put 2 tablespoons lard (or shortening) in an iron skillet (10 inch) place in oven till the fat is very hot.

Pour the batter into the skillet (it should sizzle) and bake till a straw comes out clean, (about 30 minutes).

Yield, 8 servings.

SUBMITTED BY: Andie Paysinger

SOURCE: Andie's Uncle Hat Elam, an original recipe.

[Carrot Top]

Wonderful story, andiesenji, and will try the recipe. I wonder if the mash...as it is creating a natural yeast...makes the cornbread light...

[Smithy]

Andie, that is a terrific story and a very interesting recipe! Thanks for posting both!

I'm going to have to try that recipe, now while it's still (what passes for) warm here.

Isn't it cool to have colorful family and good stories from them?

[andiesenji]

Wonderful story, andiesenji, and will try the recipe. I wonder if the mash...as it is creating a natural yeast...makes the cornbread light...

According to a friend who dabbles in nutritional studies (actually works for a super-premium dog food company), the partial fermentation of the cornmeal mash breaks down some of the starches converts them to sugars and makes it easier to digest and also to bind with other amino acids. Combined with beans it will produce a nearly complete amino acid chain which can substitute for animal protein.

[andiesenji]

Isn't it cool to have colorful family and good stories from them?

I have an extremely colorful family, many of whom where quite elderly when I was a child and all great story tellers, that being the days prior to TV, we made our own entertainment.

My grandfather was the head of a very large extended family, all living together in an enormous house. I was born before WWII and my dad and all my uncles were away in the service so all my aunts and my 9 cousins, all boys, lived with grandpa and grandma, great grandmama and my great uncles and their wives and families.

We were a village all by ourselves and quite self-sufficient.

Then there were many close family friends, some famous, some infamous, and it seemed that all of them were devoted to the enjoyment of good food. This was the foundation of my interest in food.

Many of my family kept journals and the family still has all of them. They are a great source of stories, recipes and practical knowledge of earlier times.

[arjay]

Thank you, ruthcooks. Since I have absolutely no ties to the south, I can admit I really prefer sweet cornbread 

Cornbread with any more than one tbsp. of sugar per batch aint cornbread. It must be referred to as "cake" or "dessert". It's the law.

[andiesenji]

In the thread about cornbread in Japan I tried to explain how the batter should look, i.e. not totally runny but still pourable. Difficult to explain so I decided to put it into photos, start to finish.

I don't always start with the unmilled corn but did this batch just for illustration purposes.

This is a white sweet "dent" corn - so designated because of the dent in the top of the kernel.

First, the corn in the mill.

How the milled corn looks, set for a medium grind.

The ingredients: 2 cups cornmeal, 2 cups buttermilk, 1 teaspoon salt, 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 2 tablespoon hot fat (I used bacon drippings this time).

Option is 2 tablespoons (or more) flour, this can be adjusted to personal preference.

The buttermilk mixed with the cornmeal and salt.

Everything added except the soda and fat. It should look like porridge that has just begun to thicken. Note that when stirred up, it will hold shape for a few seconds.

The batter just poured into the hot skillet. Note the bubbling around the edges.

In 400 degree oven at 25 minutes, nearly done.

Done! Note that the edge of the cornbread has pulled away from the sides of the skillet.

The crumb - desirable texture. Note how the color has developed. Cornbread made with yellow cornmeal will be much yellower.

Corn has a natural sweetness, however if you like a sweeter taste simply add a couple of tablespoons of sugar. There is no need to add additional liquid for this amount. However if you add more than two tablespoons of flour and the two tablespoons of sugar, you will need to add a bit more liquid which can be water or buttermilk. Add 1 1/2 tablespoons of buttermilk for each additional 1/4 cup of dry ingredients to maintain the same texture.

Edited March 6, 2005 by andiesenji (log)

[bakerboy]

aaaahh, now THATS cornbread. Those are some great shots. i love good southern cornbread. I do not like sweet "cake like" cornbread. Occasionally i'll crumble in some of the cooked bacon into the batter. My grandfather made cornbread this exact way.(sans the grain mill, which is very cool by the way. Gotta get me one of those.) He would break some cornbread into chunks in a glass and cover it with buttermilk and eat it with a spoon....which is to this day one of my favorite ways to eat cornbread. Okay, now i'm going to have to summon the hillbilly in me and make some cb.

nice photos dood.

[patti]

Great demo of cornbread making, andiesenji. It never even occurred to me that cooking from scratch might mean milling your own corn. I feel all Betty Crocker-ish when I don't use Jiffy. Now I see I'm only Sandra Lee!

[andiesenji]

I have had a couple of email inquiries about the mixing utensil.

This is what is known as a "Danish whisk" and is ideal for mixing quick breads as it mixes the ingredients rapidly without working the batter too much. This is particularly useful with regular wheat flour batters where you do not want to develop the gluten.

It is easy to grasp, for those of us with arthritic hands, as you can hold it as you would hold something like a potato masher.

It is also great for working slack yeast dough.

The first one I got from King Arthur Flour several years ago but they are now available at Amazon, just do a search for Danish Dough Whisk.

Edited March 6, 2005 by andiesenji (log)

[Jaymes]

Really, really wonderful photos. Thanks so much! I do wish, however, that you had called in a helper so that you could photograph the batter going into the skillet. Would have been terrific to see the consistancy of the batter as it poured. Not to mention the bubbling as it hit the hot skillet.

In the "hot cereals" thread, my dad talked about when he was a kid and they'd have to grind their own corn.... Of course he didn't have that wonderful mill that you showed.

Isn't it funny how something, such as cornbread, that seemed like such an unimportant, humble, accepted, unnoticed and unremarkable part of one's existence growing up turns out to be so marvelous when one thinks about it?

[emmapeel]

How do you keep your oven so clean? it's one of my life's mysteries. Great Cornbread...mmmmm. I like that you don't add flour and use bacon fat. Very authentic southern style cb. Thanks for the lesson and photos.

Edited March 6, 2005 by emmapeel (log)

[andiesenji]

This oven is a Cadco convection and the interior is quite easy to keep clean, however I have to confess that I personally do not clean it.

I have a live-in housekeeper, a young woman from Hungary who is attending design school and working for me under a special visa/school/ work permit.

She is a cleaning fanatic and maintains everything in pristine condition.

She is the only person I have ever known that cleans and polishes the INSIDE of the dishwasher!

[fifi]

You really know how to make cornbread . . . that's for sure.

That is pretty much exactly my recipe. No, I don't grind my own corn but I suppose I would if I had a neat mill like that. Can you adjust the fineness of the grind?

[andiesenji]

You really know how to make cornbread . . . that's for sure. 

That is pretty much exactly my recipe. No, I don't grind my own corn but I suppose I would if I had a neat mill like that. Can you adjust the fineness of the grind?

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You can adjust it from very fine to very coarse,

It is an impact mill so will not "burn" the grain the way burr grinders will and it will produce very fine flour.

I am extremely pleased with the way it operates. I have had several grain mills and this one is far superior to all the others.

Because corn is a relatively high moisture grain and will often clump, I freeze it, then dry it in a dehydrator before grinding - I do have to grind it twice, first set at the coarsest setting, then grinding that again to medium (or fine if I want corn flour but even with the drying, that does clump).

However burr mills do a very poor job on corn, beans, etc.

It does a beautiful job on rice, burr mills tend to "burn" it and it will have a bitter taste. Not so with this one.

[Hiroyuki]

The ingredients:  2 cups cornmeal, 2 cups buttermilk, 1 teaspoon salt, 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 2 tablespoon hot fat (I used bacon drippings this time).

Option is 2 tablespoons (or more) flour, this can be adjusted to personal preference.

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Great thread. Great photos, great instructions, and above all, great recipe. I gotta go for that "no sugar and no or little flour" recipe!

Thank you, andiesenji, for your time and effort.

[Hiroyuki]

I have had a couple of email inquiries about the mixing utensil. 

This is what is known as a "Danish whisk" and is ideal for mixing quick breads as it mixes the ingredients rapidly without working the batter too much.  This is particularly useful with regular wheat flour batters where you do not want to develop the gluten.

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Quite interesting. Must be ideal for making tempura batter, too.

[Chris Amirault]

Great stuff, Andiesenji. I bow down to your mill!

Isn't it funny how something, such as cornbread, that seemed like such an unimportant, humble, accepted, unnoticed and unremarkable part of one's existence growing up turns out to be so marvelous when one thinks about it?

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Yep. John Thorne devotes a great many pages to this marvel in his Simple Cooking.