KO EN ES PT FR JA ZH American Bread⏱ 47 minEdit history

Cornbread (Southern Skillet Cornbread)

Name: Cornbread (Southern Skillet Cornbread)
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 32 min
Total time: 47 min
Yield: 8 servings
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 250 g cornmeal; 1 tsp salt; 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda; 1 tsp baking powder; 1 tbsp sugar; 400 ml buttermilk; 2 eggs; 3 tbsp bacon fat

The bread of the American South, made from cornmeal. The batter does not go into a cold tin: a cast-iron skillet with fat in it is heated inside the oven until the fat smokes, and the batter goes into that. It has to sizzle the instant it lands, and that sizzle is nearly the whole dish. The base and sides fry rather than bake, into a thin crisp shell — and that shell is also why the loaf lets go of the pan by itself.

Ingredients

8servings

Dry
cornmeal · medium grind; masa harina is a different ingredient250 g
salt1 tsp
bicarbonate of soda1 tsp
baking powder1 tsp
sugar · optional; the Southern version has none at all1 tbsp
Wet
buttermilk · or 400ml milk with 1 tbsp vinegar, left 10 minutes400 ml
eggs2
For the pan
bacon fat · oil or clarified butter will do3 tbsp

Steps

Heat the oven to 220C with a 20-25cm cast-iron skillet inside it, the bacon fat already in the pan. Leave it in for 10 minutes after the oven has finished preheating. It is ready when the fat sends up a thread of smoke (what your oven is doing).
⏲ 10 min
Meanwhile whisk the cornmeal, salt, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder together in a large bowl, with the sugar if you are using it.
Beat the buttermilk and eggs together in a jug. Do not combine them yet — the soda starts making gas the moment it meets the buttermilk.
Just before the pan comes out, pour the wet into the dry and stir for 15 seconds, only until no dry flour shows. Corn has no gluten-forming protein, so there is nothing here to turn tough. What over-stirring costs you is the gas that has already been made.
⏲ 15 sec
Take the hot pan out, tilt it so the fat coats the sides, and pour most of that fat into the batter, stirring it through once. A thin film is left behind in the pan.
Pour the batter in all at once. It must sizzle. Silence means the pan was not hot enough, and without that you do not get the crust this bread is for (heat control).
Straight into the oven for 22 minutes, until the top is golden and a skewer comes out of the middle clean.
⏲ 22 min
Leave it 5 minutes, then put a plate over it and turn it out. Fried side up is the Southern way. Serve it warm with butter.
⏲ 5 min

Variations

What it goes with. Chili con carne and a pot of beans, or beside Texas brisket. Day-old pieces belong in a bowl of something wet, the way a clam chowder would take them.

More detail and the reasons why (9)

The hot pan is the dish. Preheating the tray inside the oven (what your oven is doing) becomes the whole recipe — not a warm tray but a skillet with fat in it, hot enough that batter sizzles. The surfaces that touch it fry instead of baking, and that is where the thin hard crust comes from.
The hob rules of heat control move indoors here — heat the dry pan, then add the oil; sound is your thermometer. Moved into the oven the same principle does a different job. A pan preheated on the hob sears the outside of a piece of meat; a pan preheated in the oven fries the underside of a batter.
It is also why nothing sticks. The batter sets on contact, so it never has time to soak into the iron. Poured into a cold pan it seeps in first and cooks second, and half of it stays behind.
Corn has no gluten at all. Doughs where you avoid gluten (dough and gluten) — gamja jeon, tempura — are made with flour that could form gluten, and the skill is in not developing it. Cornmeal has no network to build in the first place. So the reason to stir this as little as possible is not toughness; it is protecting the gas the soda has already made.
The soda and buttermilk are the same reaction as in Irish soda bread. Acid meets base, carbon dioxide comes off, and the clock starts when they meet. The difference is that one is a dough and this is a pourable batter — so here you buy the time by having the pan hot before you mix.
Whether sugar belongs in it is this bread's famous argument. The Southern version has none at all and goes savoury: buttermilk, bacon fat, cast iron, something to eat beside dinner and to soak in the pot liquor. The Northern one adds sugar and wheat flour and comes out moist and close to cake. They are less right-and-wrong than two different foods, and this recipe is the Southern one.
Beside polenta, arepas and amiwo. All four are built on ground corn, but polenta is boiled in water, arepas are a masarepa dough griddled, and amiwo is stirred into sauce until it sets. This is the only one that is baked.
Nixtamalisation. The treatment behind pozole — corn simmered in an alkaline solution — gives hominy, and hominy ground gives masa harina. Cornbread's cornmeal has not been through it, which is why the two cannot be swapped.
It stales fast. With no gluten network holding water, it is noticeably drier the day after it is baked. Slice what is left and fry it, or do what the South does and eat it in a glass of milk.

Tips

No buttermilk? 400ml milk with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice, left ten minutes. The soda needs an acid to react with.
Listen. If the batter goes in silently, it is worth putting the pan back to heat. Those five minutes decide the whole thing.
Turn it out. Left in the skillet more than five minutes it steams underneath and the crust you worked for goes soft.

More detail and the reasons why (4)

No cast iron? Preheat a metal cake tin instead — the heavier the better. Not glass or ceramic: they heat slowly and can crack on that kind of temperature change (what your oven is doing).
Bacon fat is the traditional choice and it genuinely tastes different. Butter burns at this temperature because of its milk solids, so use clarified butter or cut it half and half with oil.
The grind matters. Medium is the default. Fine cornmeal makes a softer bread but loses the slight grittiness that is part of it, and masa harina is a nixtamalised different ingredient that will not make this bread.
The skewer has to come out clean. Cornmeal takes up water more slowly than flour, so a loaf that looks done on top and is still wet in the middle is a common way to get this wrong.