Basics: Gluten-free Appalachian cornbread, 2025 redux

Not too surprisingly, this seemed like an excellent choice for my inaugural recipe on this new blog. (The previous iteration, from 2010.) I also have plenty of photos of past batches ready to go.

Cornbread constitutes its own food group, and a somewhat contentious one at that. There are many different styles–and everyone seems to think their preference is the best!–but, I still favor the basic baked type I grew up on: fairly neutral verging on savory, dense, and corny. I do give some suggestions in the recipe notes, on tailoring it to better suit your own taste.

This version is great just buttered, with jelly/jam/honey, or to serve alongside a nice bowl of beans, soups, stews, or chili.

That particular batch turned out a little crumbly, but still delicious. I think I used too much coarse cornmeal.

I don’t eat it nearly as much as I used to, but I probably should because I really do love the stuff. You can bet that wherever I end up or whatever dietary considerations go into it, I will figure out how to make a decent pan of cornbread.

My recipe these days draws some pretty heavy inspiration from this one from Matte Gray (sadly no longer maintained), who was also adapting it to some very different ingredient availability in the Netherlands. You can take a Southerner away from their cornbread, but…

Gluten-free Appalachian cornbread, redux

A distinct regional style of cornbread.

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Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 30 minutes mins

Oven Heating Time 20 minutes mins

Total Time 1 hour hr

Servings: 8

Course: Bread

Cuisine: American

Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

  

• 0.5 cup gluten free flour blend (150ml)
• 1.5 cup cornmeal (350ml)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1.5 teaspoon baking powder
• 0.5 teaspoon baking soda / sodium bicarbonate
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs beaten
• 1.75 cups buttermilk (to make 2 cups combined with the eggs) (500ml total)
• 4 tablespoon butter or other fat of your choice melted in the pan (50-60 grams)

Method

 

1. Crack your eggs into a measuring cup, lightly beat, and top up the container to 2 cups (or 500ml) with buttermilk. Let this sit to take some of the chill off, while you prep the rest.
2. Preheat oven to 400°F/200°C.
3. Place all dry ingredients into a mixing container, and stir to combine well.
4. Place your butter and/or other tasty cooking fat like bacon grease into a roughly 8 inch/20 cm medium sized cast iron skillet or an 8"x8" (20cmx20cm) square Pyrex dish. Toward the end of oven preheating, place the pan into the oven to melt the fat. (Alternately, if you're using a skillet, preheat it to melt the butter over medium heat on the stove.)
5. When the oven is heated, take your bowl of dry ingredients and stir in your egg/buttermilk mixture. I just use an eating tablespoon. You want a fairly smooth batter without big clumps, but without overstirring to knock the leavening bubbles out.
6. Remove your baking pan with melted fat, which should preferably not be sizzling hot yet. Pour a tablespoon or two of the fat into your batter, and gently stir to incorporate.
7. Place the baking pan back to finish heating until it is starting to get sizzling hot. If you're using butter, it should start sputtering but not yet browning unless you're into that. Once it is good and hot, stir up the batter and pour it into the hot pan. You want the crust to just start cooking and puffing a little around the edges when it hits the hot grease.
8. Bake your bread for 25-30 minutes. Better check after 25, but it may take slightly over 30. The whole top should be browned.
9. Let sit for about 10 minutes after removing from the oven, and dig in!

Notes

These are rough proportions of dry ingredients, and as you see the unit conversions don’t quite match up. It’s all good.

If you prefer a lighter, more cakelike cornbread? Use a higher proportion of flour in the batter. I prefer just enough of a starch-heavy flour blend to help bind the coarser cornmeal together, and still give denser cornier results. We’re aiming for 2 cups or 500ml total of the meal and flour. The exact composition doesn’t matter. I usually just eyeball it myself, filling a measuring cup.

If you prefer it sweeter, add more sugar. This is not a sweet style, as written. I didn’t used to include any, but the ingredients I’m using now don’t have as much natural hint of corn sweetness and need a little flavor balancing, to my own taste. Some of my relatives would probably complain if they saw any sugar involved, but it’s your cornbread and your personal taste.

These days, I am usually working with a blend of rather coarse polenta and a fine corn flour the texture of masa harina or Indian makki atta, as shown above. In this case, I have found that it works best to use roughly two parts finer corn flour to one part coarse meal. All polenta-ground meal will make it crumbly and gritty, but this gives a pretty good balance. Combining regular meal or polenta with part masa harina will give excellent flavor, but that is much less readily available in supermarkets here.

On a similar note, if you don’t have access to regular cultured buttermilk? Any tart cultured milk product will work. Here I have the local version of cultured buttermilk, but kefir or yogurt will also give good results. With yogurt or some of the thicker filmjölk here, you will want to thin it out with maybe 25% milk to a runnier consistency.

This recipe is easily halved. Here I used one of the 1L Pyrex storage bowls from IKEA, which is a great size and also carries the benefit that you can just cover any leftovers with the matching lid after it’s cool. This will give you 4 nice pieces. As the main cornbread fan in a small household, this is how I have generally been making it for a while now. The halved recipe in a smaller pan will probably require a little less cooking time. I would suggest checking it after 20 minutes.