Inspired, of course, by the biscuit thread.
I really like cornbread, but I live alone and don’t often make it. So a month or so ago I buy a box of good ol’ Albers, and follow the recipe on the box;
1 1/2 cups flour
2/3 cups sugar
1/2 cup corn meal
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups milk
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/3 cups veg. oil
3 tbsp butter (or margarine. yeah right)
Mix wets, mix drys, combine gently, bake.
Anyway, what I got was a perfect example of the sweet, cakey kind of cornbread you get at Marie Callendars. This ain’t the old Albers recipe.
What I remember, and crave, is the cornier and not quite as sweet cornbread cooked in a spider (cast iron skillet). Crusty and very yellow.
I’m going to try equal parts of flour and cornmeal, and more baking powder. I think you preheat the oven and the spider.
Any hints?
BTW; I’ve discovered cornbread freezes well.
Peace,
mangeorge
All I know is that properly made cornbread died when my grandmother did.
I’ve never been able to reproduce her cornbread and I think she just used the recipe off of the Alber’s box also.
Cornbread sucks, stick with biscuits 
Aha! another user of the Albers recipe. 
The crusty part comes from cooking in smaller quantities (like in a divided skillet instead of cake pan) and with lots of oil so the outside fries. The yellow part comes from changing the ratio of cornmeal to flour.
I use the recipe on the box, but I reverse the quantities of flour and corn meal. I also reduce the sugar, substitute hot salsa for half the liquid (milk or water) and add significant cayenne pepper to the dry mix.
Another family recipe called for using creamed corn in place of a lot of the liquid, which provided nice texture, but I like the salsa better.
I use 1:1 flour and cornmeal, and 1/3 cup sugar. Evil people sometimes substitute melted butter for the oil. It comes out heavier, yellower, and crustier than the recipe in the OP. Brown sugar makes for a nice change too.
Real southern-style cornbread, like the kind my mother makes, has no flour at all. Just cornmeal, buttermilk, eggs, baking soda, salt and a little bacon grease for flavor. This recipe is pretty close.You can use buttermilk instead of sour milk or make your own sour milk by adding one teaspoon lemon juice to one cup milk. Also note, that for crispy crust you need to heat up a cast iron skillet in the oven first, add a bit of grease to melt and coat the skillet and pour in the batter. The batter should sizzle as it hits the hot pan. Then bake. Also use whole stone-ground cornmeal if you can, it makes the best bread.
Delicious. Miles above that cakey stuff northerners call cornbread.
Off to Cafe Society.
DrMatrix - General Questions Moderator
I’m not planning on opening a cafe, doc, just eating some cornbread with my beans.
I like it from The Joy Of Cooking cookbook, when preheating the oven put the cast iron skillet in with 4 or 5 slices of bacon, pour the batter in the hot skillet with the bacon grease and you will have nice and crispy corn bread.
Gahhhh!!! Sugar??? In cornbread???
Wheat flour??? In cornbread???
My poor grandmother is rolling over in her grave.
I don’t know if you can find cornmeal mix (i.e. self-rising cornmeal) in California (seems I remember my sister having trouble finding it there), but if you can find some, try this very simple recipe:
CORNBREAD
Ingredients:
1 cup cornmeal mix (self-rising cornmeal)
1 egg
2 tablespoons shortening
Buttermilk (we’ll get around to the amount)
Preheat oven to 425
Pour cornmeal into mixing bowl; make a “nest” in the center of meal with your knuckles or a spoon. Drop egg into “nest” and scramble it good.
Now pour in buttermilk, a bit at a time, and mix meal, egg and buttermilk thoroughly with a fork. Use enough buttermilk to make the batter “sloppy” but not enough to make it “soupy.” (You should be able to pour the batter, but it shouldn’t be runny–shoul be approximately the consistency of oatmeal.) (Hey, you want exact measurements, call Betty Crocker. This is grandma’s recipe.)
Put a seasoned iron skillet, 8-10" in diameter, on the stove, medium heat. Melt the shortening in the skillet, then immediately sprinkle a tablespoon or so of cornmeal into the melted shortening. Spread the meal evenly over the bottom of the skillet. When the meal just barely begins to brown, pour your batter into the skillet. Leave skillet on the stove eye for a few moments. When the batter just barely begins to bubble in the center (should only take a few seconds), place the skillet in the oven. Cook 17-20 minutes, until golden brown.
This will produce delicious, moist cornbread, with a nice tasty crust on the bottom. Try it with some pinto beans, a sweet potato, and maybe some cabbage. MMMM MMMM!
Those who know what they’re doing split the cornbread and pour some beans(w/juice) over it. Add a bit of chow-chow (Southern version of salsa) for extra flavor.
Eh, maybe a little runnier than oatmeal…
Here’s one simple Southern variation that is dear to me -
Corn Meal
Milk
Oil
Salt
Put 3 tablespoons oil in a cast iron skillet. (8 inch)
Stick it in oven and turn on to 450
Make a medium batter, slightly pourable, out of white corn meal and buttermilk with a dash or two of table salt and a pinch of garlic powder. Use “buttermilk” meal and reg milk if you like. (I prefer White Lilly meal in my area but they’re all pretty good). Let sit until oil is hot.
Just as the oil in the oven gets REALLY hot remove (PLEASE don’t forget the mitts!) and carefully pour half the oil into the batter.
Quickly mix thoroughly and pour back into the remaining oil and (MITTS!) pop back into the oven until nice and brown (approx. 20 min.)
This don’t taste like no cake and it are good with bean. Yurm!!!
…If you don’t have an egg on hand use a heapin’ tablespoon of Duke’s mayonnaise.
You must preheat the iron skillet as in Spoke’s recipe, with the shortening un the skillet.
Try cracklin’ cornbread with precooked pork cracklin’, use white cornmeal and no sweetner.
Back in the old days Southern cooks used white cornmeal and New England cooks used yellow cornmeal.
A couple of comments about japatlgt’s recipe. Sounds like you’re using cornmeal MIX (i.e., self-rising cornmeal). Otherwise, you’d need some baking soda. (I agree with you that White Lily is the best mix. Martha White is good too, IME.)
I notice your recipe doesn’t call for eggs. this is a source of debate among cornbreadists, but I am in the egg camp. To me, cornbread without eggs is too dry. But as I said, folks differ on this point.
I’ve never tried making it with mayonnaise. Thanks for the tip, SoujournerSamson. If I ever find myself eggless…
Besides pork cracklin’s, folks have also been known to put niblet corn or jalapenos into their batter.
No flour, no sugar. Sounds good to me. White cornmeal? I’ll try it.
My dad, from Nebraska, called sweet cornbread “jonnycake”, IIRC. Not sure, though. It’s been a long time.
Check it out, cw. Look what you’re missing.
My family had a word for sweet cornbread, too. EVIL!
Sweet cornbread is the work of Satan. If you’re going to put sugar in a cornbread recipe, you might as well just go the whole way and hang inverted crosses on your wall.
Can’t help out with a recipe, though. Whenever I made (note the past tense) it it was always from a package of “Martha White Cornbread Mix,” which I haven’t been able to find since I moved to the Left Coast.
I will pile on: Sweet cornbread is simply wrong. A freak of nature. Go with cornmeal or cornbread mix. Use buttermilk if you got it, bacon grease makes a good grease for it.(YOu do save you bacon grease, doncha? I had to chew my wife out for trying to throw my grease out recently, she still gets a kick out of it.)
That lemon juice in the milk trick sounds good, I’ll prolly try it sometime.
When the cornbread gets hard, don’t throw it away (so long as there’s nothin’ growin’ on it). Just make or buy some collard greens (or turnip greens or mustard greens) and after eating the greens (with pepper sauce or even cayenne sauce if you’re out West and can’t do no better) and crumble the cornbread into the turnip greens and eat it with a spoon. They call it pot likker, and it’s very good. Cornbread in milk is nice, too. If you like buttermilk, so much the better.
This reminds me of an article I read recently (was it in Smithsonian?) about a couple of brothers in South Carolina who had created a successful business catering to the worldwide diaspora of US Southerners. They ship such things as pickled peaches, Cheerwine soda, chow-chow, sorghum syrup, pickled pigs’ feet (trotters), and other Southern foodstuffs worldwide.
Sounds like they have a waiting market for cornmeal mix on the Pacific coast.