Our favorite homemade cornbread

Our favorite cornbread recipe! This easy homemade cornbread has golden brown edges and a moist, buttery center. It bakes perfectly in a 10-inch cast iron skillet or an 8-inch or 9-inch square or round baking pan.

watch the video

Cornbread varies depending on where you are. This easy recipe falls right in the middle. Some people love sweet cornbread while others wouldn’t even consider adding sugar to their bread. Our cornbread has some sugar but isn’t overly sweet. Instead, we add just enough to make a tender, moist crumb. I love this cornbread so much I can’t stop myself from eating a second piece.

It’s incredibly flavorful thanks to the cornmeal and tastes buttery due to some melted butter being swirled into the batter. I love it, especially when served alongside a bowl of homemade chili.

What is cornmeal?

Cornmeal is the main ingredient in cornbread. It adds a nice corn flavor and texture, and using yellow cornmeal gives it that nice yellow color. Cornmeal is dried and ground corn – most likely dent corn.

You can buy cornmeal in different grits, e.g. B. fine, medium and coarse. For this cornbread recipe, we prefer the results when we use fine or medium cornmeal.

How to make cornbread

Cornbread is easy to make and doesn’t cost a lot of money when it comes to ingredients. Here is an explanation of the main ingredients you need to prepare it:

Meal with grain: You can use cornmeal at any grind (fine, medium, or coarse), but we prefer the fine or medium grind. I especially like the taste of Bob’s Red Mill ground cornmeal. Note that bags labeled “polenta” are likely cornmeal. If you already have polenta at home, you can use it to make cornbread.

Butter and Oil: We use two fats in our cornmeal recipe. Butter provides flavor and color while oil keeps the crumb tender and moist.

Brown sugar: We add some sugar to our cornbread and prefer to use brown sugar. The flavor combination of cornmeal and brown sugar works well. If you only have white sugar, that’s fine. You can keep using it; Just remember that you will lose some flavor and moisture.

Milk or Buttermilk: Both milk and buttermilk work in this recipe and to be honest I have no preference. When we tested this recipe we assumed we’d prefer buttermilk, but cornbread made with milk is still delicious and just as tasty as buttermilk. See what you think and try both. I’m curious if there is a reader favorite.

Our tips for the best cornbread

Use aromatic cornmeal. We love ground cornmeal for its texture and flavor. This is because germ and bran are still present in ground cornmeal. We use Bob’s Red Mill cornmeal, but if you’re buying stoneground cornmeal, look for “stoneground” or “whole wheat” on the package.

Use butter in the dough. Our recipe below calls for 1/4 cup of butter, which adds flavor and color not achieved with oil alone.

Use oil in the batter. I know I just said to use butter, but we also recommend using oil. The combination of oil and melted butter in the cornbread batter ensures the best flavor and a moist and tender crumb.

Let the dough rest before baking. After a few tests I came across this trick. We’ve found that if you let the dough sit at room temperature for 10-15 minutes before baking, the cornmeal has a little more time to absorb the flavor of the other ingredients and gives the leavening agents (baking soda and baking soda) a head start.

We haven’t tested how long you can let the dough sit after 15 minutes, but I imagine you’ll still get good results as long as you bake the cornbread that day. (I don’t think letting the baked cornbread sit longer than 15 minutes makes the baked cornbread any better, but again, we didn’t test that.)

Preheat the frying pan or baking pan: Before we add the cornbread batter, we preheat the pan for about 5 minutes. This trick works best when making cornbread in the pan, but you can use the same method when baking the batter in a pan. Using a preheated skillet or skillet will ensure a crispy, golden brown crust.

What to serve with cornbread

I love a slice of this tender, moist cornbread, but here are a few favorite dishes to serve it with:

Our favorite homemade cornbread

Makes 12 servings

Nutritional value per serving
serving size
1 slice (total 12 slices)
/
calories
188
/
total fat
9.9g
/
Saturated Fatty Acids
6.7g
/
cholesterol
27.7 mg
/
sodium
169.8 mg
/
carbohydrate
22.9g
/
fiber
1.1g
/
total sugar
6.5g
/
protein
3.1g

AUTHOR:

Adam and Joanne Gallagher