My Favorite
Southern Cornbread Recipes
Simply put, southern cornbread recipes call for white cornmeal only. No other flour is added and it’s unsweetened or very lightly sweetened. The result is a cornbread with a rustic, natural flavor. You have to emphasize the lightly sweetened part when talking about southern corn bread because that is one of the main things distinguishing it from northern corn bread. That and the type of cornmeal used. Northern cornbread uses yellow cornmeal. The Southern Cornbread Recipes in this section use only corn flour. They include skillet breads and corn cakes.
Show me the Southern Cornbread Recipes!
I'm a Southern girl, from the Volunteer state, and I grew up eating and enjoying southern cornbread recipes. When I first moved out west and tried to find “proper” cornmeal in the stores, I was horrified to discover they don’t carry white cornmeal! (Insert panicky, whining sounds here.) How was I going to make cornbread without cornmeal?! The closest thing in the stores here was masa harina. That’s white cornmeal used for making tamales but it’s processed in a wholly different way than cornmeal for cornbread. It is not a substitute for cornbread fixin’s at all! Months of taste bud discontent ensued. After a period of having my mother to ship cornmeal to me, I knew I needed a better solution. I stumbled around trying different things and finally settled on cornbread made with this.
This is a stone-ground, pale-yellow cornmeal. When it cooks up the bread is darker yellow with tiny, little bits of day-glow orange grinds. It’s quite good.Over the years I’ve developed an appreciation for this stone-ground cornbread. It’s a kind of hybrid really, because it uses yellow cornmeal (a northern cornbread thing) and has no added sugar (a southern cornbread) and ups the ante by incorporating a coarser, stone-ground meal. It cooks up light, not quite cake-light but nice, and has an appealingly rustic, earthy color. It’s a great basic cornbread. I’ll admit, the main reason I’ve come to love this style of cornbread is lack of access to the proper cornmeal for southern cornbread. In southern grocery stores you will find these brands.
These are corn meal mixes that have white cornmeal with baking soda, baking powder and salt already added. That means when you need cornbread you just add an egg, some milk, do the hot oil thing and presto! You’ve got cornbread! It’s the southern style cornbread equivalent to the bright blue box. The blue box is northern cornbread. The bottom line for me is, just gimme cornbread. I’ll take it nearly-‘bout any way I can get it and I can eat it with every meal of the day!
Show me the Southern Cornbread Recipes!
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