Depending on where in the United States you celebrate Thanksgiving, it may come as a surprise that the cornbread at your dinner table is not the same as the cornbread eaten in other parts of the country. I, for one, only ever knew cornbread as the sweet, cakey food at my Connecticut Thanksgiving celebrations. Turns out, cornbread is deeply rooted in United States history, and has taken on very different forms in different regions. Read on to find out what you need to know about Northern versus Southern cornbread, and my experience making and tasting them both.
Around the time that corn became a dominant Southern crop, cornbread became the “daily bread” of the South. Corn pone was the earliest version of cornbread, and it was made out of three simple ingredients: cornmeal, salt, and water. Over time, people started adding more ingredients to the corn pone, including eggs, buttermilk, baking soda/powder, and even wheat flour. Despite these changes, two things have remained relatively constant: Southern cornbread has always been made in a cast-iron skillet, and it has always included little to no sugar.
In making Southern cornbread, I used the Real Southern Cornbread recipe from Food.com. This recipe requires the standard ingredients for Southern Cornbread, including cornmeal, flour, buttermilk, and small amounts of sugar and unsalted butter. I also made it in a cast iron pan (or else it would not be Southern cornbread!).
This cornbread came out of the oven in its sizzling skillet with a lovely golden top. It had a dry, crumbly, bread-like texture, as is to be expected from traditional Southern cornbread. This cornbread was not sweet, and the flavor of the cornmeal was distinctive, but not overpowering.
While on its own, Southern cornbread may be underwhelming, it’s neutral flavor and crumbly texture make it the perfect vessel to soak up liquidy foods, like cranberry sauce or turkey gravy. Or, it can be eaten on its own, perhaps mixed with gooey cheese or spicy jalapeños. Overall, Southern cornbread is extremely versatile and pairs nicely with a wide variety of sweet or savory foods.
In contrast to the dryer, less-sweet nature of Southern cornbread, Northern cornbread is much more cakey and sweet. Indeed, colonial Americans made their cornbread with molasses to sweeten it. Also, Northern cornbread sometimes uses milk rather than buttermilk. It almost always includes significant proportions of wheat flour, and it is cooked in a baking pan instead of a skillet. Unlike Southern cornbread, Northern cornbread is often eaten on its own as a stand-alone dessert.
The recipe that I used to make Northern cornbread was My Favorite Cornbread Recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction. In case you were wondering, Sally is, of course, from a Northern state— Maryland, specifically. This recipe includes large amounts of sugar, honey, and melted butter, which distinguishes it from the Southern cornbread recipe.
When the cornbread came out of the oven, the top of it was very pale in color, but I flipped it over to reveal its golden edges and bottom, as the recipe suggested.
The cornbread was very moist and was almost the texture of a sponge cake. It was also sweet- not overwhelmingly so, but still much more sweet than its Southern counterpart. The corn flavor was very subtle, and was matched by the faint flavor of honey.
Northern cornbread’s cakey texture and sweetness allow it to be a stand-alone dish, complete without any mix-ins. It can still be used to soak up other foods, like cranberry sauce, but its sweetness makes it less versatile than Southern cornbread, and more suited to accompany other sweet foods.
I hope you now have a better idea about the different cornbreads enjoyed in different regions of the United States, and perhaps you are now inspired to make a new type of cornbread that you have never tried before!
Northern cornbread isn’t very sweet and is made with fewer eggs and yellow cornmeal to achieve a crumbly texture. Southern-style cornbread can be made with white or yellow cornmeal, has a buttery finish and calls for more eggs, which produces a cakelike texture.
In making Southern cornbread, I used the Real Southern Cornbread recipe from Food.com. This recipe requires the standard ingredients for Southern Cornbread, including cornmeal, flour, buttermilk, and small amounts of sugar and unsalted butter. I also made it in a cast iron pan (or else it would not be Southern cornbread!).
Northern cornbread’s cakey texture and sweetness allow it to be a stand-alone dish, complete without any mix-ins. It can still be used to soak up other foods, like cranberry sauce, but its sweetness makes it less versatile than Southern cornbread, and more suited to accompany other sweet foods.
The cornbread was very moist and was almost the texture of a sponge cake. It was also sweet- not overwhelmingly so, but still much more sweet than its Southern counterpart. The corn flavor was very subtle, and was matched by the faint flavor of honey.
The recipe that I used to make Northern cornbread was My Favorite Cornbread Recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction. In case you were wondering, Sally is, of course, from a Northern state— Maryland, specifically. This recipe includes large amounts of sugar, honey, and melted butter, which distinguishes it from the Southern cornbread recipe.
While on its own, Southern cornbread may be underwhelming, it’s neutral flavor and crumbly texture make it the perfect vessel to soak up liquidy foods, like cranberry sauce or turkey gravy. Or, it can be eaten on its own, perhaps mixed with gooey cheese or spicy jalapeños. Overall, Southern cornbread is extremely versatile and pairs nicely with a wide variety of sweet or savory foods.
The white does bake up yellowish and has, I think, a finer flavor and texture. Most recipes for cornbread require a cast-iron skillet; I like to preheat the skillet in the oven with some fat melting in it so that when you pour in the batter it sizzles, creating that wonderful outer crispy crust on the finished baked bread.
I changed the recipe slightly because it called for baking in a 12-inch skillet. I didn’t need such a huge serving. I cut the recipe in half and put it into a vintage 8-inch Lodge skillet, naturally seasoned over the years instead of the newer versions, which are pre-seasoned. The bread was slightly thicker than it might have been in the `12-inch skillet. But the texture and flavor were enriched by the high amount of sugar. This was undeniably a savory cornbread, but a heap of strawberries over it would have been just right, too.
Last week I received my order of all-purpose flour from Boonville along with self-rising flour, which I use for biscuits, and their stone-ground white cornmeal. (One has a choice of getting self-rising cornmeal, too.) Ah, there’s another difference between north and south cornmeal practice. White cornmeal is standard in the south, the yellow shunned by cooks below the Mason-Dixon line.
The softness of southern wheat is unmistakable in what it does to biscuits in particular and cakes and pastry dough. It’s a bit of an effort to acquire this flour by mail order but well worth the bother.
I get my cornmeal in 5-pound bags from the southern granary, Boonville Flour and Feed, a wonderfully old-fashioned mill who also makes the best all-purpose flour. Southern flour is called soft winter wheat, favored by southern bakers for pastry, cakes, biscuits, cookies and the like. White Lily has always been the standard, though some purists now prefer flour from small mills. (White Lily is now owned by Smuckers.)
Southern Cornbread Recipe | Homemade Cornbread
FAQ
What is the difference between regular cornbread and Southern cornbread?
Why is Southern cornbread not sweet?
What is a Southern cornbread called?
What does Southern cornbread taste like?
What is the difference between Southern cornbread & northern cornbread?
Although this definitely can vary, Southern cornbread is made with self-rising cornmeal, no sugar, and typically uses buttermilk in its batter. Northern-style cornbread is typically a sweeter cake-like cornbread made with sugar, a flour and cornmeal blend, and typically uses milk as opposed to buttermilk.
Is corn bread gluten free?
Corn as a cereal comes under the category of gluten free foods. Gluten is a protein which is mainly present in cereals like wheat, rye, barley. Corn bread can be gluten free but checking for the ingredient list is important as other things added into it may contain gluten. So whenever ready to eat corn bread is available check the food label to understand whether it is 100 percent gluten free.
What is Southern cornbread?
Southern cornbread is typically baked in a preheated cast iron skillet, which gives it a really crispy crust (the best part!). The cornbread has a more coarse and crumbly texture than its northern counterparts, and the unsweetened cornbread has a tangy, savory taste (thanks to buttermilk).
What is the difference between Southern cornbread and old fashioned cornbread?
The most notable difference with old fashioned southern cornbread is that it doesn’t have any sugar added to the batter, resulting in a more savory style bread that pairs perfectly with just about any Southern dinner you can imagine. What Is Southern Cornbread Made Of?