Cornbread Recipe
My wife does most of the holiday cooking because she is a lot more organized than I am. Yes, I help with the bigger items on her menu but she likes to prep and prepare most of the smaller side dishes a day or two before Thanksgiving. She’ll go through one of my cooking magazines and fine a complete menu to serve, shop for all the ingredients and start cooking.
For example, this year we are having two Thanksgivings. One with a couple of friends from out of town on Wednesday and one with my wife’s family on Thursday. So she found a menu for a “Smaller Thanksgiving” in the November issue of Bon Appetite. I’m not sure how much of it I’ll get to photograph and post, but here is the cornbread recipe she prepared last night.
Ingredients
1 1/3 cups coarse stone-ground yellow cornmeal
1 cup unbleached all purpose flour
¼ cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
¾ teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk
9 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 large egg plus 1 large egg yolk, beaten to blend.
How to Prepare Cornbread
The recipe called for a 9×5x3 inch metal loaf pan but my wife use a 9-inch x 3- inch round cake pan instead. When asked why she didn’t use our loaf pan, she told me it was the first pan she grabbed and went with it.
Mix the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Add the buttermilk, the melted butter and beaten eggs. Stir everything together until smooth. This now has to stand for 30 minutes so the cornmeal can absorb the liquids. Now’s a good time to preheat the oven to 375° F.
Grease the pan with some butter or spray oil and pour the batter into it. Bake the bread until the edges turn brown and test it with a toothpick by sticking it into the cake. If it comes out clean you are done. This should take about 40 minutes.
The bread needs to rest for at least 5 minutes before taking out of the pan. Let the bread cool on a rack so air circulates all around it if you have one.
You can make this bread 2 days before you are going to use it. Just be sure to wrap it up tight and store at room temperature. When ready to use, cut it up into serving sizes. This is a great bread to use to sop up some of that turkey gravy left on the plate.
on November 26th, 2006 at 10:20 am
What a beautiful cornbread! I’m going to try it & use a round pan too. Did your wife make any other recipes you’d care to share?
on December 7th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
This would be even better baked in an old-fashioned iron skillet, especially one that is old and well seasoned. My mother had an iron skillet with a long handled lid. She baked cornbread in the lid, though probably a smaller batch than your recipe calls for; hers turned out about 3/4″ thick and was a bit crispy. Yum!
on December 30th, 2006 at 11:54 am
I always bake my corn bread in the big cast iron skillet, it turns out wonderful. I also bake pineapple upside down cake in it. It turns out terrific every time!