Cornbread help?

Question

Making cornbread for the first time. My recipe says fine ground corn meal but my store has only either stone ground whole grain corn flour (very fine) or coarse ground gluten free corn meal. Does it matter which one I use?
Thanks.

Answer

I would buy the coarse ground and then blitz in a food processor to make it more fine (or coffee grinder if it's a smaller amount)

Haven't tried this one myself but anson mills (known for their grits) as this recipe for skillet cornbread using the coarse cornmeal- the photo gives you a good idea of the texture
http://www.ansonmills.com/recipes/464

Answer

I think they mean not coarse cornmeal, which I use for things like under pizza dough. I use medium grind for cornbread. I don't use corn flour, which is as you said is very fine, for cornbread.

Answer

The stone ground should be fine. Its usually pretty finely ground, but uneven. And tends to be whole grain corn meal, so its got a better flavor. Particularly if its Indian Head you should be able to just swap it out for the fine ground.

Answer

For a beginner a northern style cornbread using roughly equal parts flour and cornmeal is the easiest - both in cooking and in eating. The southern style, using all cornmeal, might be too coarse and/or crumbly.

While southern purists insist there shouldn't be an sugar in their bread, the amount of sugar in the northern style is highly variable. Northern recipes work perfectly fine without sugar. Some even argue that traditional field ripened corn was sweeter than the modern - though I have some doubts about that claim. 

Cornmeal texture can vary. My ideal, for a northern style, is coarse enough to taste, but not so coarse that I'm left with uncooked grit sticking in my teeth. It is probably safer to err on the side of fineness. Stone ground will be more variable in texture than roll-mill ground (polenta style cornmeal).

I once made southern style with a fine cornmeal (Bobs Red Mill corn flour) and thought that it worked well. The fine cornmeal plus the crust formed by starting in a hot skillet gave it a structure that a coarser meal would have lost.

In the UK, 'cornflour' is what Americans call cornstarch. But the corn flour that Bobs Red Mill sells is ok for cornbread.

One trick when using a coarser ground meal is to pour boiling water over it (about 1/2c per c of corn) and let it sit for 10 minutes (covered). This starts the hydration process.

Answer

Where are you located? What store did you look in? Any of the run-of-the-mill cornmeals available in the baking section of a typical supermarket (and for that matter, many "specialty" stores and certainly places like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's) is what they mean. If you're in NYC as your "locations" suggest, "Indian Head" seems to be the mainstream brand most commonly available in these parts, and it's available everywhere.. Basically, pretty much anything you'll find on shelves in NYC labelled "cornmeal" as opposed to "corn flour", "polenta", or "corn meal for polenta" should work just fine... Hell, you can probably find it in the grocery section of a large chain drugstore like Duane Reade, Rite Aid, CVS, or Walgreen's...

PS: Unless you're willing to end up with a product with an uneven crumb, I would NOT try to "grind" coarse corn meal in sufficient quantities for corn bread in anything but an actual grain grinder (ie, not in a blender, food processor, etc) because you simply won't get an even result that way, unless you go to absurd lengths to sift the results over and over (and over) again...

Answer

hmm thought I knew a bit about cornbread, clearly a new playground to explore.

Answer

Get an old fashioned box of Quaker yellow corn meal and you'll be fine.

Answer

I have been looking for a mexican or green chile cornbread from the back of the (discontinued) pioneer box forever. I know I made it in the early 1990's. If you have it or even remember the name please post.

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Cornbread help?

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