Read The Cook's Illustrated Cookbook Online
Authors: The Editors at America's Test Kitchen
Tags: #Cooking
The Cook's Illustrated Cookbook (269 page)
SERVES 9
Use stone-ground cornmeal for the best taste and texture.
1 | cup (5 ounces) stone-ground cornmeal |
1 | cup (5 ounces) all-purpose flour |
4 | teaspoons sugar |
2 | teaspoons baking powder |
¹⁄ | teaspoon baking soda |
¹⁄ | teaspoon salt |
2 | large eggs |
²⁄ | cup buttermilk |
²⁄ | cup whole milk |
2 | tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled |
1.
Adjust oven rack to center position and heat oven to 425 degrees. Grease 9-inch square baking pan. Stir cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in large bowl to combine. Make well in center of dry ingredients.
2.
Crack eggs into well and stir gently with wooden spoon. Add buttermilk and milk, then quickly stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients, stirring until almost combined. Add butter and stir until ingredients are just combined.
3.
Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake until top is golden brown and lightly cracked and edges have pulled away from sides of pan, about 25 minutes.
4.
Transfer to wire rack to let cool slightly, 5 to 10 minutes, and serve.
You may use Monterey Jack instead of the cheddar.
Omit sugar. After adding butter to batter, quickly fold in 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese.
One jalapeño lends mild heat to the cornbread. For bolder heat, use up to 2 jalapeños, with seeds.
Omit sugar. After adding butter to batter, quickly fold in 1 small stemmed, seeded, and minced jalapeño chile.
Cook 8 slices bacon, chopped fine, over medium-high heat until crisp, about 5 minutes. Transfer to paper towel–lined plate and let cool. Omit sugar. After adding butter to batter, quickly fold in bacon.
WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS
Classic Southern cornbread is made in a hot skillet greased with bacon fat, which causes it to develop a thin, crispy crust as the bread bakes. Traditionally, Southern-style corn bread is made from white cornmeal and has only trace amounts of sugar and flour. We wanted to perfect the proportions of ingredients and come up with our own crusty, savory Southern-style cornbread baked in a cast-iron skillet. Departing from tradition, we chose yellow cornmeal over white—cornbreads made with yellow cornmeal consistently had a more potent corn flavor than those made with white cornmeal. Combining part of the cornmeal with boiling water to create a cornmeal “mush” gave us a cornbread with great corn flavor, and it also produced a fine, moist crumb. Buttermilk lent good tang, and just a small amount of sugar enhanced the natural sweetness of the corn. Finally, we poured the batter into a hot, greased cast-iron skillet to bake until crusty and fragrant.
SERVES 8 TO 10
Cornmeal mush of just the right texture is essential to this bread. Make sure that the water is at a rapid boil when it is added to the cornmeal. And for an accurate measurement of boiling water, bring a kettle of water to a boil, then measure out the desired amount. Though we prefer to make cornbread in a preheated cast-iron skillet, a 9-inch round cake pan or 9-inch square baking pan, greased lightly with butter and not preheated, will also produce acceptable results if you double the recipe and bake the bread for 25 minutes.
4 | teaspoons bacon drippings or 1 tablespoon melted unsalted butter plus 1 teaspoon vegetable oil |
1 | cup (5 ounces) stone-ground cornmeal |
2 | teaspoons granulated sugar |
1 | teaspoon baking powder |
¹⁄ | teaspoon baking soda |
¹⁄ | teaspoon salt |
¹⁄ | cup boiling water |
³⁄ | cup buttermilk |
1 | large egg, lightly beaten |
1.
Adjust oven rack to lower middle position and heat oven to 450 degrees. Add bacon drippings to 8-inch cast-iron skillet and place skillet in preheating oven.
2.
Place ¹⁄
3
cup cornmeal in medium bowl and set aside. Mix remaining ²⁄
3
cup cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in small bowl; set aside.
3.
Pour boiling water over reserved ¹⁄
3
cup cornmeal and stir to make stiff mush. Gradually whisk in buttermilk, breaking up lumps until smooth. Whisk in egg. When oven is up to temperature and skillet very hot, stir dry ingredients into mush mixture until just moistened. Carefully remove skillet from oven. Pour hot bacon fat from skillet into batter and stir to incorporate, then quickly pour batter into heated skillet. Bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Remove from oven and immediately turn cornbread onto wire rack; let cool for 5 minutes, then serve.
SEASONING CAST IRON
For years we’ve seasoned cast-iron cookware in the test kitchen by placing it over medium heat and wiping out the pan with coats of vegetable oil until its surface turns dark and shiny. When a pan starts to look patchy, we simply repeat the process. But when we heard about a new method that creates a slick surface so indestructible that touch-ups are almost never necessary, we were intrigued. Developed by blogger Sheryl Canter, the approach calls for treating the pan with multiple coats of flaxseed oil between hour-long stints in the oven.
We carried out Canter’s approach on new, unseasoned cast-iron skillets and compared them with pans treated with vegetable oil—and the results amazed us. The flaxseed oil so effectively bonded to the skillets, forming a sheer, stick-resistant veneer, that even a run through our commercial dishwasher with a squirt of degreaser left them totally unscathed. But the vegetable oil–treated skillets showed rusty spots and patchiness when they emerged from the dishwasher, requiring reseasoning before use.
Why did the new treatment work so well? Flaxseed oil is the food-grade equivalent of linseed oil, used by artists to give their paintings a hard, polished finish, and it boasts six times the amount of omega-3 fatty acids as vegetable oil. Over prolonged exposure to high heat, these fatty acids combine to form a strong, solid matrix that polymerizes to the pan’s surface.
Although lengthy, seasoning with flaxseed oil is a mainly hands-off undertaking. We highly recommend the treatment:
1.
Warm an unseasoned pan (either new or stripped of seasoning*) for 15 minutes in a 200-degree oven to open its pores.
2.
Remove the pan from the oven. Place 1 tablespoon flaxseed oil in the pan and, using tongs, rub the oil into the surface with paper towels. With fresh paper towels, thoroughly wipe out the pan to remove excess oil.
3.
Place the oiled pan upside down in a cold oven, then set the oven to its maximum baking temperature. Once the oven reaches its maximum temperature, heat the pan for one hour. Turn off the oven; let the pan cool in the oven for at least two hours.
4.
Repeat the process five more times, or until the pan develops a dark, semimatte surface.
* To strip a cast-iron pan of seasoning, spray it with oven cleaner, wait 30 minutes, wash with soapy water, and thoroughly wipe with paper towels.
MAKES ABOUT 12 CORN STICKS
Corn stick pans have anywhere from 7 to 12 molds. If your pan has fewer than 12 molds, you will need to bake the sticks in two batches.
Substitute heavy-gauge corn stick pan for cast-iron skillet; heat pan in oven as directed, omitting fat. Remove hot pan from oven, brush molds generously with bacon fat, then fill almost to rim with batter. Bake until cornbread is golden brown, 18 to 20 minutes. Turn sticks onto rack to cool. If making second batch, wipe crumbs from molds and reheat pan in oven for 5 minutes before brushing with additional fat and filling with remaining batter.
The addition of extra sugar and cake flour moves this cornbread a small step away from its Southern roots. Though still very far removed from Northern-style cornbread, this version has a subtle sweetness and a very fine texture.
Increase sugar to 3 tablespoons and add ¹⁄
4
cup cake flour to dry ingredients.
WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS
Boston brown bread can be heavy and dense. We wanted a lighter loaf; moist, not dry, and flavored with molasses. To achieve our goals, we cut back on the amount of whole wheat flour that is typically called for and added some unbleached all-purpose flour in its place, dramatically improving the bread by lightening up its texture and flavor balance. We chose “robust,” or dark, molasses for the deep color and bold, bittersweet flavor that it added to the loaves. To add moisture to our Boston brown bread, we opted for buttermilk rather than milk because its tanginess complemented the other flavors in the bread and its acidity reacted with the baking soda already in the batter to provide greater lift. Instead of the traditional but less-convenient coffee can, we used a loaf pan. After filling it with batter, we covered the pan tightly with foil, placed it in a Dutch oven with water reaching halfway up the sides of the pan, and cooked it on the stovetop, which worked perfectly to steam the loaf.
SERVES 10
Don’t use blackstrap molasses here; if you can’t find dark molasses, substitute light molasses. You can substitute a 1-pound coffee can (rinsed clean and liberally greased) for the loaf pan if desired; cover and steam as directed, making sure the water reaches halfway up the sides of the can. The test kitchen’s preferred loaf pan measures 8¹⁄
2
by 4¹⁄
2
inches; if you use a 9 by 5-inch loaf pan, start checking for doneness 5 minutes earlier than advised in the recipe.
¹⁄ | cup (2¹⁄ |
¹⁄ | cup (2²⁄ |
¹⁄ | cup (1¹⁄ |
¹⁄ | cup (1¹⁄ |
1 | teaspoon baking soda |
¹⁄ | teaspoon salt |
1 | cup buttermilk |
¹⁄ | cup dark molasses |
¹⁄ | cup raisins |
1.
Grease 8¹⁄
2
by 4¹⁄
2
-inch loaf pan. Fold piece of heavy-duty aluminum foil into 12 by 8-inch rectangle, and grease one side.
2.
Whisk cornmeal, rye flour, whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, baking soda, and salt together in large bowl. Stir in buttermilk and molasses until combined and uniform. Stir in raisins. Scrape batter into prepared pan and smooth top. Wrap with prepared foil, greased side facing batter.
3.
Set loaf pan in Dutch oven and fill pot with enough water to reach halfway up side of loaf pan. Bring to simmer over medium heat, then reduce heat to low, cover pot, and cook until toothpick inserted in center of loaf comes out clean, 50 minutes to 1 hour. (Check water level every 20 minutes to make sure water still reaches halfway up sides of loaf pan; add more water if necessary.)
4.
Let loaf cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto wire rack and let cool for 1 hour before serving.