I buy whole grain coarse corn meal from Hodson Mills via their internet site. Also, Bob's Red Mill sells a coarse grain cornmeal. I have to look for it at different grocery stores; not all stock it.

Yes, Bob's Red Mill has coarse, med, and fine. We usually have all three, and white and yellow. We use different ones for various recipes. Our local health food store has all of Bob's....some groceries just stock a few Bob's choices.
My grandmother made a 'corn-pone' (sp?), native American Eastern Shore...
Only my brother and I liked it. Not a 'cake' or a pudding. But dense and creamy. Such a shame we do not have any of her recipes. I loved her rustic methods.

We have developed our own using minced onion, grated fresh corn, and peppers to find a similar moist version using cast iron hot on the stove, then a finish in the oven.
You might have to google and google and read many recipe versions to find something similar.

I have a good recipe for old-fashioned cornbread, but it is on my computer at home. It does not contain flour or sugar, but it does have eggs, buttermilk, and baking soda (and perhaps some baking powder). I use that recipe when making cornbread for turkey dressing, although I sometimes use grits instead. I happen to like that cornbread cold. It is baked in the oven in an iron skillet and is not turned.

I want to try making cornbread with grated fresh corn and peppers, as I have some fresh corn that needs to be used. I have not made that version yet, but I have had it in cafeterias in Texas. I'll post the recipe I have when I get home.

Lars

Sounds like the classic American "jonnycake". The link below to the What's Cooking America website has a recipe and a nice little history about it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Jonnycake, Johnnycake, Journey Cakes - it's all the same thing

I know of no other American culinary topic that ignites more passion than an attempt to define the proper way to make cornbread. In general, you have the choice of making a savory ‘Southern’ cornbread (no sugar, no flour, white corn meal preferred) or a sweetish corn-muffin type cornbread (yellow corn meal, with sugar and flour added--that’s what they seem to like up North). You'll find partisans on both sides. I personally prefer a non-sweet cornbread, but chacun a son gout. A savory non-sweet cornbread is a great accompaniment to chili, beans and greens. (Can you imagine sopping up pot likker with a Jiffy corn muffin? Heresy.) By the way, those interested in the nutritive properties of pot likker (the pot juices from cooking greens) can turn to an unlikely source, the late Senator Huey Long. Back in the thirties, if you wanted to filibuster in the US Senate, you had to filibuster, by God, standing up there talking for hours on end. On June 12, 1935 Huey threw a 15 ½ hour filibuster. (Looking around the chamber at several of his colleagues dozing at their desks, Long suggested to Vice President John Nance Garner, who was presiding, that every senator should be forced to listen to him until excused. Garner replied, "That would be unusual cruelty under the Bill of Rights." ) In that filibuster he meandered from topic to topic, one of which was the health-giving properties of pot likker. He also discussed the various techniques of consumption--"should one crumble the cornbread into the liquid, or spoon the liquid over the cornbread? Bloviated rhetoric aside, he was on to something; dark green vegetables such as greens are packed with nutrients, and using a piece of good cornbread makes good sense to keep those nutrients from being wasted.

Without meaning to make the Cornbread Holy Wars erupt again, my favorite recipe for a savory (as opposed to sweet) cornbread is from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads. I use this recipe, slightly altered, when I make cornbread for making Thanksgiving dressing; a quadruple recipe just barely fits into a 5 quart KitchenAid mixer bowl, and from there into an 11 x 14 pan. The recipe calls for white corn meal, but yellow is perfectly acceptable. Indeed, the most important attribute of the cornmeal is how fresh it is, not whether it’s white or yellow. If you have access to freshly ground corn meal, it'll be plenty sweet on its own, without any added sweetener. (Corn meal can go bitter soon after it has been ground.) So try to buy your corn meal in a store that seems to have a good turnover of corn meal-- that's probably NOT in a gourmet store, but rather a store which serves a less snooty clientele.

2 eggs, room temperature (if the eggs are straight from the fridge, put them in a bowl of hot tap water for a few minutes)
2 cups buttermilk, room temperature (you can nuke it a little to take the chill off if need be)
1 tsp baking soda
2 cups white cornmeal (but yellow is okay, too)
1 1/2 tsp salt
Preheat oven and greased baking utensil (skillet or 9 x 9 pan) to 450° while mixing batter.
In a small bowl beat the eggs and mix in the buttermilk. In a mixer bowl, mix the baking soda, cornmeal and salt. Pour in the egg-buttermilk mixture and mix well until smooth.
Pour batter into the preheated pan, and return the pan to the oven for 20 to 25 minutes. It's done when a knife inserted into the center of the pan comes out clean & dry.

Note: if you’re making this to use as a basis for cornbread dressing, leave out the salt. The sausage and other ingredients you add will have plenty of salt for the dressing.

Here is the recipe I use, which is very similar to Arley's (thanks for posting that!), except that it adds bacon grease. I generally substitute half butter and half grapeseed oil for the bacon grease, since Kevin would not eat it, but it's better with bacon grease, which is how my mother and grandmothers made it in Texas.

Lars

Frankly, I like it all. For breakfast I like a sweeter corn muffin, with butter and honey or jam, or just by itself. For eating with beans I like a savory cornbread with no sugar better, but I'll use whatever is available.. I don't really care whether it's white or yellow but Elery's sister lives in Tennessee and tells me emphatically that if it's not made with white cornmeal, it is NOT cornbread. I live in Michigan, home of Jiffy Mix, so I just smile. I always bake mine in my cast iron skillet, because the crust gets so nice and crunchy.

I think cornmeal has changed, though, or is different depending on brands. The cornbread recipe I used for years suddenly started turning out dry, crumbly, just not right. I've been "playing" with recipes for a while now, adding cheese, bacon, jalapenos, creamed corn, sour cream, whatever suits my fancy.

A mildly sweet corn muffin with bacon and jalapenos goes really well with chili, and I'm as likely to sop up pot likker with Jiffy muffins as I am with Elery's white savory cornbread.

Lately my favorite has been this recipe from Ellie Krieger's "Comfort Food Fix", although it's a spoon bread, not your typical corn bread. It has all corn, no flour.

Corn and Cheddar Spoon Bread

2 cups 1% milk
1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen thawed corn kernels
2/3 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup grated extra-sharp cheddar cheese
2 large eggs, yolks and white separated
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Spray a 2-quart baking dish with cooking spray.

2. In a medium saucepan, combine milk, corn, cornmeal, and salt over medium-high heat and bring to a gentle boil, stirring constantly. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer until the mixture thickens, 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the cheese. Allow to cool for 10 minutes. Add the egg yolks to the cornmeal mixture and stir until well combined.

3. In a stand mixer or using a handheld electric mixer, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar until soft peaks are formed, 1 to 2 minutes. Fold the egg whites into the corn mixture until just incorporated and pour into the prepared dish. Bake until browned on top and set but still slightly loose in the center, 40 to 45 minutes. Serves 6

Per Serving (3/4 cup) Calories 180; Total Fat 7 g (Sat Fat 3 g, Mono Fat 2g, Poly Fat 0.8 g); Protein 10 g; Carb 22 g; Fiber 2 g; Cholesterol 85 mg; Sodium 320 mg

This is Elery's recipe, handed down from his mother. She always used white cornmeal (self-rising was preferred), bacon grease or lard and always cooked in a hot cast iron skillet. If it stuck at all, it didn't get turned over and it was still fine, but if you turn it over the top gets a bit more crunchy.

Corn Bread

2 cups white cornmeal (use yellow if that's what you have on hand)
2/3 cup flour
1-1/2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda (omit if you use regular milk rather than buttermilk)
1/2 teaspoon salt
Dash of black pepper
1 1/2 cups buttermilk (more or less)
3 to 4 tablespoons of bacon drippings, lard or cooking oi
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Placing the bacon drippings in the skillet and place the skillet in the oven while preparing the batter.

Combine all the dry ingredients and mix well. Add about 1/2 cup of the buttermilk and stir. Remove skillet from oven and slowly add about 1 or 2 tablespoon of the hot oil (bacon grease) from the skillet into the batter, stirring well. The skillet and bacon grease should be very hot but not smoking.

Sprinkle the inside of the skillet with (dry) cornmeal and return to oven. Add rest of buttermilk to batter a bit at a time while stirring. The consistency of the cornbread batter should look like a thick pancake mix. This may require a little more or less of the remaining buttermilk. If the mix is too thick, add more buttermilk. If the mixture is too thin, add more cornmeal.

Remove the skillet from oven and pour the batter in the skillet. Return the skillet to the pre-heated oven and bake until the top begins to brown, approximately 25 minutes.

Remove the cornbread from the oven and flip the cornbread over in the skillet then continue baking another 5 minutes to brown the top.

Annie

I made This Jalapeno Cornbread recipe tonight, or something close to it, tonight, and I really liked it. I used 1 cup of milk and 1/2 cup of water, one fresh chopped jalapeno instead of the canned ones, no pimentos, 1/2 onion, 1 chopped red bell pepper (instead of jarred pimentos), 1 smoked chicken thigh instead of the bacon, and one cup of grated cheddar instead of 1/2 cup. Otherwise, I followed the recipe fairly closely and baked the cornbread in a 10" skillet that had been heated in the preheating oven. I also added fresh corn from one corn cob, and this made it a bit sweet, but it was still very good.

Lars

When I was a kid, my Nan would make Johnnycake in a round cake pan, or skillet. We loved it warm with butter.

I'm with Annie, I like it all....and refuse to take sides. :-)

I found Johnnycake recipes similar to what was requested, as well as Southern Corn Bread recipes. I also found "Corn Bread", which was a yeast bread - to continue the debate.

The first time I tried cornbread was at school (Friday during Lent was always beans and cornbread - topped with vinegar-soaked chopped onions), and I was hooked. My Canadian mother and Canadian-raised father never had cornbread, and it wasn't until my mother was diagnosed with Celiac Disease that she made a GF version.

I found this in an old cookbook I was looking through recently. It's obviously a sweet Northern version, but I found it interesting.

"Two cups Indian [cornmeal], one cup wheat [flour],
One cup sour milk, one cup sweet,
One good egg that you will beat.
Half a cup molasses, too.
Half cup sugar add thereto
With one spoon of butter new.
Salt and soda each a spoon,
Mix up quickly and bake it soon.
Then you'll have corn bread complete,
Best of all corn bread you meet.
It will make your boy's eyes shine
If he's like that boy of mine."

-Grainlady