Coarse Ground Cornmeal

[HNA]

I have baked with the coarse stone ground corn meal now since 1979. It had body. It gave cornbread character, allowed the baking soda to rise the bread, it provided a delicious base to soak up the broths and soups and chilis.

Now...what is this stuff they sell? It is so finely ground that it resembles regular flour, or maybe even cake flour! It is useless for making good cornbread! I have been experimenting with it now for probably 2 years. The cornbread turns out rubbery. Blech

I cannot find the real coarse stone ground cornmeal any more on the supermarket shelves. It is all -Self Rising, or the fine ground stuff. I stopped by a Publix the other day, and looked on their shelves. The nice young man directed me to their tiny 3 cup package of -polenta. It is similar, but a bit more coarse. I bought one to use on the tamale pie I made. Good enough, but makes too much. And, for the amount of cornmeal I used to use....too expensive.

It seems like the corn meal producers have gone to marketing the old fashioned grind as "gourmet" (?)

I have even looked online-of course. As well as local. All packaged in itty bitty bags...for exorbitant amounts of $$$$.

I wonder if the GMO corn is grinding differently than the older varieties...non-GMO.

As it is, when I do have to use the newer grind varieties of corn meal ...I have to measure VERY CAREFULLY. Tablespoon by tablespoon, into the one cup measure. Even then, the results are only slightly less rubbery.

The chickens eat it up of course.


Has anyone else noticed this difference in their cornmeal the past 2 years?

[Old Fashioned]

Since I just use regular cornmeal, I don't really have an answer for you. I've not ever used coarse ground so I wouldn't know of any differences as far as that goes and my cornbread turns out great & not rubbery. My recipe uses baking powder instead of soda and I usually make a double batch & bake it in a 13x9. Just the 4 of us will eat about 2/3 of it & whatever is left is saved for the chickens as a treat.
Anyway......what brands of cornmeal have you used? or looked at? I find online that Bob's Red Mill would probably be the right grind for your recipe, but it is a small pkg (2lb) & expensive and so is Hodgson Mill.
Unfortunately, the other option would be to grow and grind your own meal to your specifications. I do have a 1/2 pkg of 'Wade's Giant Indian' corn from Baker Creek that is supposed to be a good flint corn for meal and livestock feed that I'll give you. It was for 2014 but should still be viable. I tried to grow some this past summer, but it didn't work in our northern climate & would probably grow better in your area. Just msg me if you want it.....of course it could take a couple of years of growing, harvesting, saving seed & growing more to get enough for your needs...but it could work. Let me know.

Here's the recipe I use for cornbread. It comes from 'Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook' that is a hardbound 3-ring binder and all the pages are falling out I estimate the date to be from the late 50's or 60's (I can't find a publishing date anywhere)

Perfect Cornbread:

1 C flour
1/4 C sugar
4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 C cornmeal
2 eggs
1 C milk
1/4 C shortening

Preheat oven to 425. Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Stir in corn meal. Add eggs, milk and shortening. Beat with rotary or electric beater till just smooth, about 1 minute. (Do not overbeat.) Pour batter into greased 9x9x2-inch pan. Bake in hot oven 20-25 minutes.

--This is the basic recipe and it comes out thick & tasty. I double it cause this isn't enough for us. We all love our cornbread Hubby likes it to be a bit sweeter & not cooked for the full time, so I add more sugar than it calls for and cut the time by 5 minutes.

ps.....I'm too lazy to sift it like it says & just mix it all together.

[HNA]

Baking powder. The Clabber Girl one.

I have only ever used what used to be sold at the stores. It used to be, plain old corn meal. Now it is powdery fine.

My former MIL taught me to cook cornbread with her recipe. Good ol' country cooking from the Missouri Ozarks.

i C. cornmeal
1 C. flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 C sugar
1 egg
1/4 C. Vegetable oil
1 C milk.

Mix ingredients. Pour in pre-heated cast iron skillet. Bake inhot oven, 425F for 25 minutes.
It had always turned out perfect.

I have made it this way since 1979.

There was only ever one kind of grind for cornmeal previously. I didn't even remember seeing self-rising bags till recently. Just the other little boxes.

[Old Fashioned]

now that you mention it, I don't remember self-rising meal either but then I never buy it either. I want to 'raise' it myself

[HNA]

My MIL gave me a bag she didn't like. I baked 1 batch of cornbread from it. Yuk. It was far too salty.

[Farmfresh]

No guarantees here, but try adding an extra egg or maybe even two. I have to battle bad batters all of the time with the GF stuff and the extra eggs really help to make it lighter and more moist.

[HNA]

I did. I have tried everything i could think of. Extra egg, milk, oil. Sifting and being anal about measuring the cornmeal.

Nothing has worked. That's why I ended up posting queries on the internet.

[HNA]

Ok..I might have found a "fix" for this problem. I had some of the polenta ground left over, so tonight I mixed it half and half with the other stuff. It turned out edible.

I think to use it straight in the cornbread might make it too rough. But mixing it seems to help the texture.

[House Sparrow]

I am glad you may have found a solution. I haven't been buying corn meal, since I wanted GMO free stuff. I finally found a source for organic cornmeal, but have not used it to make corn bread. I rarely use it. I am more interested in corn flour, so I can make tortillas.
I tend to stay away from grains in general.
I did grow my own corn for grinding and thogh I can grind many grains in the blender, corn is too tought to grind that way. So I got a manual grain mill for Chistmas and we tried it out once. It was still hard to do, so I have not really used it yet. The corn that I grew has been going to the chickens and goats.

[HNA]

It seems that GMO corn will end up in too many products these days. Everything has corn in it. And unfortunately, I use a few of them.
So I just try to limit how much I use them.
Right now, we have no way here to successfully grow corn, and grow enough corn, to make it worth our while. So I will just have to know what food products contain corn, and/or use them sparingly.