8/19/2010 - Cornbread

Cornbread is the only chemically leavened bread in BBA (the bread is leavened by baking powder and baking soda instead of by yeast). The fact that it was included at all in a book of yeast breads would suggest that PR is rather fond of it, and he says as much in the description preceding the formula. We like corn bread made the plain normal way, usually served with chili. I also really like to make it the way I remember my mother making it when I was little, with crumbled bacon and shredded cheddar cheese mixed in. We top it with syrup and eat it as a casual, comfort-food kind of dinner. So when I saw that PR tops his cornbread with bacon, I had a good feeling about it.

This formula begins with a cornmeal soaker, which is left at room temperature overnight. The formula calls for buttermilk, but I soaked my cornmeal in whole milk and called it good. Also, I used regular cornmeal instead of the coarsely ground cornmeal or polenta that PR calls for. The next day I fried up my bacon on my skillet; PR instructs to bake it in the oven, but I opted for the easy way. Mixing up the batter was pretty standard, but I could tell already that this formula was going to make a very sweet cornbread. I followed the formula and used the bacon fat to grease my cake pan, poured in the batter, sprinkled on the bacon, and popped it in the oven.

We were excited about this recipe, and we fully expected it to be the new cornbread that would replace my old one. But we were disappointed. First there was the texture. I think using the finely ground cornmeal was a mistake. The overnight soak definitely made a big difference to the texture, but not in a good way; I think a coarser grind of cornmeal would stand up better. Then there was the corn. I have thought about adding corn to my cornbread before, but I've never done it because I didn't think it would be good with syrup. Since this cornbread was so sweet, I wondered if we might be able to eat it on its own, avoiding the syrup issue. It was definitely sweet enough, but it seemed too dry without some gooey syrup soaked into it. Also, J4 missed having bacon pieces baked into the bread. We did enjoy the crispness of the bacon on top, and I think in the future I'll mix half in the batter and sprinkle half on top to get the best of both worlds. I think it may just be that we enjoy a particular cornbread experience that is something completely different from what PR prefers. And for the first time in this project, I think next time I'll stick to my old recipe.