GUEST POST: Let’s talk cornbread!

I haven’t been posting many recipes lately because, well, I’m creating recipes, then creating them, and then writing about them for my forthcoming book. For that reason have turned to some friends who are willing to help out with their own fabulous recipes.

I met my friend Daniel two years ago at one of Robin Asbell’s public cooking class at the Natural Gourmet Institute. We hit it off immediately and have been friends ever since. He is a phenomenal cook and baker. His food photos on his personal Facebook account are drool-worthy. When he told me he had perfected vegan cornbread, I begged asked him to write-up the recipe and a post for you all. Did he ever!

Enjoy!

Let’s talk cornbread! (Or, What I did during my summer vacation)

Cornbread is one of those perplexing dishes that seems incredibly easy to make, yet nearly impossible to master. I have always loved eating it (it simply must be on my Thanksgiving table) and have been fumbling around with recipes for it since my teenage years, when my newly vegetarian self discovered that the Jiffy mixes we relied on contained lard. Years went by where I would try different recipes, always with unsatisfactory results: the cornbread would be too dry, too wet, too dense, too crumbly, not flavorful enough, etc. Then one fateful night I had superb skillet cornbread at Dos Caminos restaurant on Park Avenue South and thought: Now THIS is what cornbread should be about. I am going to perfect my cornbread or die trying.

Naturally, this being super-busy New York, a couple of years passed between making the resolution and getting around to doing something about it. But when a gig suddenly dried up and I found myself unexpectedly with lots of time on my hands this summer, it was time to roll up my sleeves, don an apron, and get to work.

First, I had to figure out what exactly I was aiming for in terms of texture and flavor because there is no definitive cornbread, only lots of personal and regional preferences. Southerners abhor sugar, and in many cases flour, in their cornbread but love savory ingredients like bacon grease (not going there!), cheese, and jalapeño peppers. Northerners prefer a sweeter, more cake-like product. As a Yankee, my tastes were definitely in sympathy with New England, but I wanted to create something more crusty, textured, and less sweet than in a typical cake or muffin. A rich corn flavor was paramount. I wanted to use whole grains and less processed ingredients without compromising taste and texture. Finally, I wanted to develop a cornbread for vegan and gluten-free audiences that would be a delicious in its own right, not a pale imitation of cornbreads containing butter, eggs, and wheat flour.

Thankfully, cornbread is what we call a “quick bread,” meaning it relies on chemical leavening rather than yeast, and so can go from an idea in your brain to something yummy in your mouth within an hour. This time efficiency was going to be very helpful as I churned out experimental batch after experimental batch.

Since I wanted to use more wholesome ingredients, there was no question about using stone-ground whole grain cornmeal. Not only does it have all the nutritious goodness of whole grains, but it tastes so much better than the standard “enriched and degerminated” cornmeal typically found on supermarket shelves. In all my baking experience, I have never seen a case where refined cornmeal performed better than its whole grain cousin, so I recommend banishing it from your pantry. Whole wheat pastry flour worked beautifully in place of all-purpose. I tried both coconut sugar and rapadura, but found they work better as brown sugar replacements, so ultimately I ended up choosing organic sugar.

Veganizing the cornbread proved trickier. While substituting unsweetened almond milk for cow’s milk was a no-brainer, replacing the butter was far more challenging, because butter provides both richness and a flavor that’s hard to imitate in vegan baking. The intense flavor of extra virgin coconut oil completely overwhelmed the corn. Refined coconut oil worked better, but it had to be melted and wasn’t adding anything flavorwise. Pureed avocado turned my cornbread green. Ultimately, I found refined grapeseed oil with a touch of imitation butter flavor to do the trick. Now, I know that using imitation butter flavor is a bit of “better living through chemistry” and I can perfectly understand why some of you might not want to put scary-sounding substances like diacetyl in your food. However, it is vegan and the tiny amount I used helped create the flavor effect I wanted. Feel free to experiment: try leaving it out entirely or substituting it with a couple of tablespoons of rum and let me know how it comes out!

Replacing the eggs was the next hurdle and almost caused my veganization efforts to come to a screeching halt. The problem is, eggs have amazing baking properties—they bind and leaven, they add richness, they whip up into light airy concotions like meringues without breaking a sweat. Without them, my cornbread literally crumbled and would not hold together when I tried to get it out of the pan. Ener-G egg replacer did not work. Ground flax and water gave me a flaxy-tasting product (it made me think of all the bad vegan baked goods I had ever bought at health food stores). Banana gave me an amazing texture but a result that tasted like banana bread (surprise!). Ground chia seeds and water seemed promising and didn’t interfere with the flavor but weren’t quite giving me the right texture.

In despair, I consulted Peter Berley’s mostly vegan cookbook The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen. His vegan skillet cornbread recipe replaces half the cornmeal with masa harina, otherwise known as corn tortilla flour.

Masa harina (a commonly available brand is Maseca) is produced when corn is soaked and cooked in an alkaline solution, then ground and dried. This traditional process, known as nixtamalization, was invented by Central American native peoples. Nixtamalization makes key nutrients in corn (like niacin) available to the body and it enabled whole empires such as the Mayan and Aztec to run on corn-based diets; in contrast, poor populations subsisting primarily on untreated corn quickly developed deficiency diseases like pellagra and kwashiorkor. Thanks to the nixtamalization process, adding water to masa harina creates an easy-to-work with dough—no eggs required! This substitution was a win-win, as I could easily replace the eggs and enrich the corn flavor at the same time.

Finally, a heated cast iron skillet gave me the crustiness I was looking for. Cast iron pans are making a comeback in American kitchens, and it’s about time. They retain heat beautifully for slow, even cooking; boost the iron content in foods (a nutritional win for plant-eaters); and are the original non-stick cookware—without the toxic chemical coating. They also last a lifetime. The only drawback is their weight, but you could take advantage of this fact to develop some upper-body strength without visiting the gym. The key to developing a nice crusty cornbread is to preheat the cast iron skillet in the oven before adding the batter. The heated pan with a little oil will fry the outside of the batter, and your mouth will thank you.

Without further ado, here are the results of what I did during my summer vacation.

Vegan Skillet Cornbread

Inspired by Peter Berley and Michael Ruhlman

• 3 oz stone-ground whole-grain cornmeal, medium-to-fine grind (3/4 cup*)
• 3 oz masa harina (3/4 cup)
• 3 oz organic sugar (scant 1/2 cup)
• 2 oz whole-wheat pastry flour (1/2 cup)
• 2 tsp (10g) baking powder
• 1 tsp (6g) sea salt
• 8 oz unsweetened plain almond milk
• 3 oz refined grapeseed oil
• 1 tsp (4g) imitation butter flavoring (optional)

NOTE: Gluten-free version: Use 4 oz (1 cup) cornmeal, 4 oz (1 cup) masa harina, and no flour

1. Place an 8-inch cast iron skillet in the oven and preheat to 425° F.
2. Whisk together cornmeal, masa harina, sugar, flour (if using), baking powder, and salt. Make a well in the center.
3. Whisk together milk, oil, and flavoring. Fold into dry ingredients. Do not overmix.
4. Remove preheated skillet from oven, brush with 1 tsp grapeseed oil, and pour in batter. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown, edges have pulled away from the sides, the center springs back from the touch, and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool for 15 minutes before serving.

NOTE: I strongly recommend using a kitchen scale instead of cups. Weighing is faster and more accurate than using volume for measuring dry ingredients like flour. The actual amount of flour in 1 cup can vary dramatically depending on how tightly it’s packed, which can really throw off your recipe. This recipe was developed using weights; the volume measurements provided here are estimations.

Web designer by day, aspiring badass home cook by night, Daniel O’Neil makes his home in New York City. He stopped eating animals over 26 years ago. 

Tags: guest postvegan skillet cornbread

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