Cornbread: Introduction

Cornbread is a type of food which is classified as a 'quick bread'. It differs from traditional breads because it does not use yeast but an acid reaction to rise and bind.

As the name suggests, Cornbread contains cornmeal and has an interesting history. It's invention has been credited to Native Americans. And was only discovered by Europeans when they arrived in North America.

Cheap to make, it has remained a popular and economic meal for millions of Americans. It's use has remained strong since the inception of the American nation. Commentators believe the Civil War was the beginning of it's widespread popularity, when the troops needed a cheap and quick meal.

It's use in the Southern States of America has been noted as being more widespread than in the North. Possibly because it's a cheaper to make bread with cornbread than wheat. But there are many staple Northern offshoots of cornbreads such as Johnny Cakes.

Some people like to make a distinction between Northern and Southern cornbread. They do tend to use different corn and baking procedures, Northern cornbread typically uses sweeter ingredients than Southern cornbread, which tends to use salty ingredients.

What is obvious, Cornbread has many uses and comes in a huge range of varieties. Far too many to know and list. However, the technique of baking Cornbread is usually through frying or oven baking, but it is also possible to use steam in the cooking process.

One of the best known techniques for Southern cornbread involves skillet frying. Hot bacon fat (or a similar animal fat) is fried, then butter milk, the cornmeal batter and egg is poured onto the hot fat. Popular Northern recipes use a similar technique, but with different (usually sweeter) ingredients.

Cornbread: Basic Southern Recipe

This style of cornbread is not sweet and is typical of a Southern recipe.

Ingredients

- One and a third cups of cornmeal (ground)

- One cup of white flour

- One cup of butter milk

- A quarter cup of canola or vegetable oil

- One egg

- Two teaspoons of baking powder

- Two thirds of a teaspoon of salt

- One third of a teaspoon of baking soda

Instructions

Grease a pan, around about eight to nine inches in size. The pan can be either square or round. Whisk the canola oil, egg and butter milk together. In another bowl combine the ground cornmeal, flour, salt baking soda and baking powder. Finally, combine the two bowls of ingredients and pour into the tin. Place in an oven at 340° for twenty minutes.

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