Corn Bread

A hot-from-the-oven pan of cornbread is an excellent way to elevate a weeknight dinner of chili or soup or really anything. It's a rather lowly baked good that, homemade and warm, adds something special to any meal. 

Traditional cornbread recipes, like this vintage one from the 1969 Dorcas Missionary Circle of the Baptist Church in Pound, Wisconsin, are rather plebeian affairs. Short on sugar and fat, they are nonetheless delicious.  And extremely simple to make, and equally difficult to screw up. It's an excellent addendum to your Thanksgiving table, or crumbled and used as a stuffing base.

While I mostly bake from handwritten recipes, I do love church and school cookbooks, as I think the housewives and church ladies submit their best recipes.

Start by sifting the dry ingredients together.

Stir in the wet ingredients until they're well combined and...

smooth, like this. A spoon works fine -- no need for any modern-day machines.

Pour the batter in a greased pan and smooth until it reaches the edges.

Bake until the top is golden and the edges just begin to come away from the sides of the pan.

Turn out, cut and enjoy.

Production notes: I followed this exactly, but accidentally used half & half in place of the milk (a sad fact I discovered the next morning when I poured my coffee). I baked it for about 20 minutes -- you don't want to overbake cornbread or it will be dry.

Corn Bread for Two

Here's my Thanksgiving miracle. After making this recipe a few weeks ago, I misplaced the recipe card -- and could not find it anywhere.  But then, this morning the DH mentions casually that I'd left a couple of recipe cards next to "his" new chair, and bingo, there it was! I'm grateful for many things this Thanksgiving, not least of which is finding this recipe (which I'll make today, if I have the time and oven space).

It is simple cornbread, moist and flavorful, with a lovely texture, especially if you use a coarse grind of cornmeal. This makes way more servings than two, but perhaps it was meant to serve farm hands, or cowboys.

Here's the mis en place except for the butter, which I forgot here, but not in the batter.

The vintage recipe was simply a list of ingredients, but I've written out the method I used below.

Unsure of the pan size (but guided by the "for two") in the title, I used an eight-inch round pan.

The top should be golden brown when done.

The rather cryptic recipe card below.

Corn Bread for Two

Preheat oven to 400F
Grease and flour an 8-inch round or square pan (or equivalent)

1/2 c course ground cornmeal
1/2 c all-purpose flour
2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
2 T sugar
2 T melted butter
1 egg
1/2 c milk

In a medium bowl, blend dry ingredients together.
Add wet ingredients and combine (but don't over mix!)
Pour into prepared pan.
Bake for about 20 minutes.

Southern Spoon Corn Bread

Despite the title of this vintage recipe card, I doubt this is a true southern spoon corn bread. But I have no doubt that it would be a delicious addition to anyone's Thanksgiving table this year.  True spoon bread is to be eaten with a spoon and is more of a souffle than a bread (at least according to the trusty internet).

This corn bread may look like typical corn bread, but it is very, very moist -- not typical at all of traditional corn bread. And despite the fact that it contains no corn, something about its texture fools the palate into thinking otherwise.  It also tastes fairly sweet, surprising since only a small amount of sugar is called for.

So if you want to add something new to your Thanksgiving meal this year (and who doesn't?), let's get started. This couldn't be easier to make.  Add boiling water to cornmeal and let it sit until cool.

Next, add the buttermilk, egg yolks, melted butter and the dry ingredients.

Blend together and then fold in stiffly beaten egg whites.

Pour into a pan.  This is where it gets tricky.  The recipe cards says to use a pan where the batter is less than two inches deep.  Having had my cup batter runneth over recently, I opted for a 9 x 12 pan. My guess is using a smaller pan would result in the corn bread having a more pudding-like texture (and probably require a spoon to eat).

Production notes: I used melted butter for the fat, and supermarket buttermilk for the sour milk. I misread the recipe and used three eggs instead of two, which may have accounted for the extra moistness.