1 1/4 cups Flour
3/4 cup CornMeal
1/4 cup Sugar
2 tsps. Baking Power
1/2 tsp. Salt (optional)
1 cup Milk
1/4 cup Vegetable Oil
2 egg whites or 1 egg, beaten
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease 8 or 9 inch baking pan. Combine dry ingredients. Stir in mil, oil and egg, mixing just until dry ingredients are moistened. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until light golden brown and wooden pick inserted near center comes out clean. Serve warm.
Makes about 9 servings.
I always use Powered Milk and Unbleached Flour.
Or if you want to stick with good old Jiffy Mix, here’s their link: http://www.jiffymix.com/
HISTORY ABOUT CORN BREAD:
We all have the Native Americans to thank for corn bread. Its humble beginnings can be traced back to the Indians that the European settlers came in contact with when they first arrived in America. However, it stands to reason that the Native Americans have been making corn bread long before that.
The Indians used corn ground into meal and flour for years in their cooking. Corn was a major food source so they were very creative in its usage. Because the white settlers were dependent on the natural resources, they too, adopted the practice of making corn bread. A surge in popularity around Civil War time was inevitable as corn was plentiful and cheap. Corn bread and other meals made from corn were easy to make.
Because there were special varieties of corn grown throughout North America, the corn bread differed by region. In the southwest areas, blue corn was popular. The northern regions favored the yellow corn and the south had white corn. In addition, the preparations in making corn bread differed too.
In the beginning, when a lot of supplies were scarce, the Indians made corn bread from a simple mixture of water, salt and cornmeal. The recipe graduated to using variety of sweetener products like sugar, honey or molasses for northern corn bread. The south tended to steer clear of the sweetened corn bread and favored using fat from bacon or lard.
Because of some of the natural components in the corn, there is no need to use yeast to get the corn bread to rise. This property makes it one of America’s favorite quick breads. These days, you can still make corn bread from scratch. However, there are a number of varieties of corn bread mixes available these days from your local grocery store. Corn bread, once a major part of a diet, is now a southern accompanying favorite to almost any meal.
Reposted from Indians.org
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Native Americans were using ground corn (maize) for food thousands of years before European explorers arrived in the New World. European settlers, especially those who resided in the southern English colonies, learned from natives—”Indians” such as Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek—the original recipes and processes for corn dishes, and soon they devised recipes for using cornmeal in breads similar to those made of grains available in Europe. Cornbread has been called a “cornerstone” of Southern United States cuisine. Cornmeal is produced by grinding dry raw corn grains. A coarser meal (compare flour) made from corn is grits. Grits are produced by soaking raw corn grains in hot water containing calcium hydroxide (the alkaline salt), which loosens the grain hulls (bran) and increases the nutritional value of the product (by increasing available niacin and available amino acids). These are separated by washing and flotation in water, and the now softened slightly swelled grains are called hominy. Hominy, posole in Spanish, also is ground into masa harina for tamales and tortillas). This ancient Native American technology has been named nixtamalization.[2] Besides cornbread, Native Americans used corn to make numerous other dishes from the familiar hominy grits to liquors (as Andean chicha). Cornbread was popular during the American Civil War because it was very cheap and could be made in many different forms—high-rising, fluffy loaves or simply fried (as unleavened pone, corn fritters, hoecakes, etc.)
Reposted from Wikipedia.org