WANTED: A recipe for exceptionally moist pareve cornbread. Please note that the cornbread recipe in The Kosher Palette falls into the “bone dry” category.
E-mailed or commented recipes greatly appreciated.
The following is only sort of cornbread. I’ve never tried it with soy milk, but I see no reason why it shouldn’t work. Adapted from The Tassajara Bread Book, by Edward Espe Brown:EXPERIMENTAL PAREVE THREE LAYER CORNBREAD1 cup cornmeal1/2 cup whole wheat flour1/2 cup unbleached white flour1/4 cup wheat bran or germ2 teaspoons baking powder1 teaspoon salt2 eggs1/4 to 1/2 cup honey or molasses1/4 cup oil or melted margarine3 cups unflavored, unsweetened soy milkPreheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Combine the dry ingredients in one bowl, wet ingredients in another. Mix ‘em all together. The resulting batter will be so thin, so prone to separating, that you’ll swear (B"N) you did something wrong. It will never become homogeneous (the cornmeal settles to the bottom), so just make sure you get any lumps out.Pour the batter into a greased 9 inch square pan. Bake for about 50 minutes, or until the top is springy when *gently* touched in the center. Let cool to room temperature before slicing.If it works, the bran/germ should form a top layer, with a custardy layer in the middle and some actual corn bread on the bottom. Not sure how much the flavor would change due to soy milk, but non-dairy creamer scares the daylights out of me.
2 April 2004
slutzman
+0
I have posed this great culinary sh’eila to a trained pastry chef friend of mine. She has accepted the challenge and will be reporting back to me after she has a chance to do a little research. I’m optimistic!
Find a copy of the Nov 2001 Cook’s Illustrated; it has a recipe for the perfect cornbread. The trick doesn’t seem to be anything about the dairy products but rather using hot water to make a cornmeal mush out of a portion of the cornmeal.
These are my two cornbread recipes. They are okay as far as moistness goes. I don’t recall any specific problem, anyhow. The real trouble is that corn is one of the grains which hardens up when it cools and there’s not much to be done about this.For moistness, rice flour is not recommended. Tapioca or cornstarch is best at retaining moisture. Wheat flour is also possible, but you have to make sure you don’t overbeat.Mix: 1 c stoneground yellow cornmeal, 1 c cornstarch, tapioca starch, or rice flour, 1/2 t salt, 1/4 t baking soda, 1 T baking powder. Mix in separate bowl: 1 egg, 1/4 c sugar (I use less), 1/3 c oil (I use less), 1 1/4 c room temperature buttermilk or water or soymilk or plain yogurt. If you’re using water or soy milk or plain milk, you might want to add a little bit of vinegar or substitute brown sugar to give the baking soda something to react with.As skillet heats on stove, combine wet and dry ingredients mixing just enough to combine. When pan is hot, scrape batter in (it should sizzle)and transfer to oven. Bake 25 min until light brown at edges. Cut in wedges and serve warm, although it’s okay cold.Appalachian Cornbread:preheat oven to 450. Put 4 T (or less) butter or oil or schmaltz into 10" cast iron skillet or other dish and put into oven to heat. combine: 2 c fine white cornmeal (I just use what I can find), 1 t salt, 1/2 t soda, 1/2 t baking powder.combine in separate bowl: 1 egg, 1 1/2 c buttermilk or water or yogurt.Mix wet and dry with enough strokes just to combine. Take dish from oven, tipping to make fat coat the pan. pour fat into batter, stir, and put batter into skillet, baking until golden brown about 20-25 min.
Unfortunately, I haven’t yet had a chance to experiment with cornbread, but Thanksgiving would be a good excuse to try. I think my first attempt will be the first of Ms. Rosenbaum’s recipe suggestions, using hot liquid as Cook’s Illustrated recommends.
24 November 2004
Tzipora
+0
I like the cornbread recipe from Angelica Kitchen. I confess to frequently taking liberties with it (using whatever flour is available, ignoring the scallions, and - gasp! - using aluminum foil pans) and I usually heat it before serving.
From “The Angelica Home Kitchen”:
Yield: 8 servings
Baking time: 25 minutes
Not to be confused with our Angelica Cornbread, this is our vegan version of a good, old-fashioned, fluffy southern cornbread. It is true comfort food, an extremely popular menu item, mostly ordered as a side dish to accompany Angelica’s daily entree specials. There are at least 500 servings made per week, which translates to about 25,000 pieces of bread per year. Try this recipe and you’ll realize there’s no need for the lard and eggs you find in traditional cornbread.
Serving suggestions: This bread is the perfect accompaniment to chili, barbecued beans, or basic beans.
1 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup unbleached white flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup minced scallions
1 cup soy milk
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Oil an 8 to 10-inch round ovenproof glass or cast iron skillet.
Whisk together the cornmeal, whole wheat pastry flour, unbleached white flour, baking powder, and scallions in a mixing bowl.
In a separate mixing bowl, combine the soy milk, olive oil, maple syrup, and sea salt.
Combine the wet and dry ingredients. Mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon; do not overmix.
Pour into the oiled baking dish and bake for approximately 25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
Set aside to cool.
Slice into wedges and serve.
7 March 2005
Tom Provost
+0
To add moisture to the “bonedry” corn bread, try these two methods… why not modify the recipe with 1/2 cup of pureed corn? Possible to used canned? It would be softer and would not have to be heated like frozen corn. Second, by using the broth from the can of corn and reduce the amount of soy milk used in the recipes mentioned, you are introducing moisture that won’t bind to the margarine like soy milk will when baking. The end result will be a smaller “crumb”, a denser corn bread while offering the moisture you want.
Believe it or not, just substitute equal measure of pareve creamer for milk or buttermilk. You can thing the creamer with a little milk. Otherwise, use the standard cornbread recipe, simper the better — taught to me by a real Southern cook and served successfully to reeeeeal small-town Southern folks.
[...] January 18, 2008 A. has been eating Koala Krisp cereal for breakfast. There’s a slug on the box that proclaims “1% of sales donated to wildlife”. I know they mean they give money to wildlife ORGANIZATIONS, but every time I read it I imagine the nice people at EnviroKidz handing twenties directly to a bunch of koalas. Which then makes me think of Mitch Hedberg’s koala infestation skit. (There’s some adult language in that link, if that matters to you.) J. and I find him hysterical, I would have loved to have had an opportunity to see him live. I updated my pareve cornbread recipe. Once the muffins were cool they were kind of dry and a lot tougher than when they were straight out of the oven. Apparently I’m not the only one seeking a moist, tender non-dairy (or vegan) cornbread. I’ll try this Blue Ribbon Vegan Cornbread next. [...]
when i saw the heading, i thought you were actually going to solve this age-old problem :-(
The following is only sort of cornbread. I’ve never tried it with soy milk, but I see no reason why it shouldn’t work. Adapted from The Tassajara Bread Book, by Edward Espe Brown:EXPERIMENTAL PAREVE THREE LAYER CORNBREAD1 cup cornmeal1/2 cup whole wheat flour1/2 cup unbleached white flour1/4 cup wheat bran or germ2 teaspoons baking powder1 teaspoon salt2 eggs1/4 to 1/2 cup honey or molasses1/4 cup oil or melted margarine3 cups unflavored, unsweetened soy milkPreheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Combine the dry ingredients in one bowl, wet ingredients in another. Mix ‘em all together. The resulting batter will be so thin, so prone to separating, that you’ll swear (B"N) you did something wrong. It will never become homogeneous (the cornmeal settles to the bottom), so just make sure you get any lumps out.Pour the batter into a greased 9 inch square pan. Bake for about 50 minutes, or until the top is springy when *gently* touched in the center. Let cool to room temperature before slicing.If it works, the bran/germ should form a top layer, with a custardy layer in the middle and some actual corn bread on the bottom. Not sure how much the flavor would change due to soy milk, but non-dairy creamer scares the daylights out of me.
I have posed this great culinary sh’eila to a trained pastry chef friend of mine. She has accepted the challenge and will be reporting back to me after she has a chance to do a little research. I’m optimistic!
Find a copy of the Nov 2001 Cook’s Illustrated; it has a recipe for the perfect cornbread. The trick doesn’t seem to be anything about the dairy products but rather using hot water to make a cornmeal mush out of a portion of the cornmeal.
These are my two cornbread recipes. They are okay as far as moistness goes. I don’t recall any specific problem, anyhow. The real trouble is that corn is one of the grains which hardens up when it cools and there’s not much to be done about this.For moistness, rice flour is not recommended. Tapioca or cornstarch is best at retaining moisture. Wheat flour is also possible, but you have to make sure you don’t overbeat.Mix: 1 c stoneground yellow cornmeal, 1 c cornstarch, tapioca starch, or rice flour, 1/2 t salt, 1/4 t baking soda, 1 T baking powder. Mix in separate bowl: 1 egg, 1/4 c sugar (I use less), 1/3 c oil (I use less), 1 1/4 c room temperature buttermilk or water or soymilk or plain yogurt. If you’re using water or soy milk or plain milk, you might want to add a little bit of vinegar or substitute brown sugar to give the baking soda something to react with.As skillet heats on stove, combine wet and dry ingredients mixing just enough to combine. When pan is hot, scrape batter in (it should sizzle)and transfer to oven. Bake 25 min until light brown at edges. Cut in wedges and serve warm, although it’s okay cold.Appalachian Cornbread:preheat oven to 450. Put 4 T (or less) butter or oil or schmaltz into 10" cast iron skillet or other dish and put into oven to heat. combine: 2 c fine white cornmeal (I just use what I can find), 1 t salt, 1/2 t soda, 1/2 t baking powder.combine in separate bowl: 1 egg, 1 1/2 c buttermilk or water or yogurt.Mix wet and dry with enough strokes just to combine. Take dish from oven, tipping to make fat coat the pan. pour fat into batter, stir, and put batter into skillet, baking until golden brown about 20-25 min.
I think Sunday morning will be my official cornbread test day. I’ll try to dig up that Cook’s Illustrated recipe and test it, too.
With Thanksgiving on our heels, I’m wondering if you had any success with this?
Unfortunately, I haven’t yet had a chance to experiment with cornbread, but Thanksgiving would be a good excuse to try. I think my first attempt will be the first of Ms. Rosenbaum’s recipe suggestions, using hot liquid as Cook’s Illustrated recommends.
I like the cornbread recipe from Angelica Kitchen. I confess to frequently taking liberties with it (using whatever flour is available, ignoring the scallions, and - gasp! - using aluminum foil pans) and I usually heat it before serving.
From “The Angelica Home Kitchen”:
Yield: 8 servings
Baking time: 25 minutes
Not to be confused with our Angelica Cornbread, this is our vegan version of a good, old-fashioned, fluffy southern cornbread. It is true comfort food, an extremely popular menu item, mostly ordered as a side dish to accompany Angelica’s daily entree specials. There are at least 500 servings made per week, which translates to about 25,000 pieces of bread per year. Try this recipe and you’ll realize there’s no need for the lard and eggs you find in traditional cornbread.
Serving suggestions: This bread is the perfect accompaniment to chili, barbecued beans, or basic beans.
1 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup unbleached white flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup minced scallions
1 cup soy milk
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Oil an 8 to 10-inch round ovenproof glass or cast iron skillet.
Whisk together the cornmeal, whole wheat pastry flour, unbleached white flour, baking powder, and scallions in a mixing bowl.
In a separate mixing bowl, combine the soy milk, olive oil, maple syrup, and sea salt.
Combine the wet and dry ingredients. Mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon; do not overmix.
Pour into the oiled baking dish and bake for approximately 25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
Set aside to cool.
Slice into wedges and serve.
To add moisture to the “bonedry” corn bread, try these two methods… why not modify the recipe with 1/2 cup of pureed corn? Possible to used canned? It would be softer and would not have to be heated like frozen corn. Second, by using the broth from the can of corn and reduce the amount of soy milk used in the recipes mentioned, you are introducing moisture that won’t bind to the margarine like soy milk will when baking. The end result will be a smaller “crumb”, a denser corn bread while offering the moisture you want.
Tom– thanks for the tip. I may be making cornbread later this week; I’ll report back results using your suggestions if I do.
Believe it or not, just substitute equal measure of pareve creamer for milk or buttermilk. You can thing the creamer with a little milk. Otherwise, use the standard cornbread recipe, simper the better — taught to me by a real Southern cook and served successfully to reeeeeal small-town Southern folks.
[...] January 18, 2008 A. has been eating Koala Krisp cereal for breakfast. There’s a slug on the box that proclaims “1% of sales donated to wildlife”. I know they mean they give money to wildlife ORGANIZATIONS, but every time I read it I imagine the nice people at EnviroKidz handing twenties directly to a bunch of koalas. Which then makes me think of Mitch Hedberg’s koala infestation skit. (There’s some adult language in that link, if that matters to you.) J. and I find him hysterical, I would have loved to have had an opportunity to see him live. I updated my pareve cornbread recipe. Once the muffins were cool they were kind of dry and a lot tougher than when they were straight out of the oven. Apparently I’m not the only one seeking a moist, tender non-dairy (or vegan) cornbread. I’ll try this Blue Ribbon Vegan Cornbread next. [...]