We eat a lot of cornbread in my home, so I have opinions. On the best recipes, the right cooking vessels, even when and where to eat it. And I certainly have opinions on the best ingredients. When you’re basing a meal on something so simple, so pure as cornbread, the ingredients really count.
Regional foods always come with some not-so-secret ingredients: the personal preferences and traditions of the families that have made and served them for generations. So, it’s hard to say what makes cornbread universally “good.” But no matter how you make it, the most important ingredient, by far, is the cornmeal.
Let me cut to the chase: if you want to keep just one cornmeal on hand, for cornbread and everything else, then choose a good quality, medium-grind cornmeal. Ideally, stoneground. Get organic if you can. Then store it in the freezer and save it for when the mood strikes.
Best Cornmeal for Cornbread At a Glance
| Brand | Appear-ance | Grind Style | Price Per Ounce* | Availab-ility | Results | Best For |
| Quaker | Yellow. Very consis-tent texture. A little hard. | Steel | $0.125 | Major super-markets, local grocers, online | A little “institu-tional” looking, like a cafeteria corn-bread. Very mild flavor. Slightly dense. | Reliability + Memor-ies. |
| Bob’s Red Mill | Light yellow. Texture included flakes and hard pieces. | Stone | $0.171 | Major supermarkets, local grocers, specialty stores, online | Medium crumb. Lots of tiny air pockets. Moist and very tender cake. The fullest corn flavor of the three. | Full corn flavor and rich texture. |
| Dixie Lily | White, soft and flaky. The lightest texture of all three. | Stone | $0.11 | Region-ally in Southeastern U.S. super-markets and local grocers, specialty websites. | Good lift; consist-ent medium crumb and air pockets. Cake was a little dry and ever so slightly rubbery. Mild flavor, but corn taste was evident. | Milder flavor and slightly more delicate texture. |
*At time of purchase
Your Family Recipe May Vary
Even though I grew up in the Midwest, I’ve lived my entire adult life in the South. On Southern tables, cornbread isn’t the sweet side item that I grew up with. No; in my adult household, a big hunk of cornbread is placed in the center of an entrée bowl, where it’s topped with one of a few acceptable accompaniments: greens with pot likker, or field peas and their gravy-like juices, or a spicy chili, or maybe a hearty stew.
The primary cornbread of our home is hearty, corn flavor-forward, airy, and definitely savory, not sweet. It is always cooked in a cast-iron skillet, because that’s the way it’s done. It is tender and moist, a little crumbly and absolutely delicious.
That’s not to say that other families’ favorite cornbread recipes aren’t wonderful, too. The cornbread I grew up with is more like a cake or muffin, perfect with butter and honey. Also, delicious. I’ll get to that kind of cornbread in a minute.
For my money, a true Southern cornbread does not contain wheat flour or sugar. It’s simply cornmeal, baking soda, egg, buttermilk, bacon fat or butter, kosher salt. Cornbreads in other regions might add wheat flour, sugar, or canned or frozen corn kernels. It’s all good; just start with a cornmeal you can count on.
A Primer on Grinds
Cornmeals come in multiple grinds. How many? That depends how you count them. On either end of the grind continuum, cornmeal starts going by other names. Right there in the middle is medium. Move to the finer end of the dial, and you get fine cornmeal, then corn flour, then corn starch. Move toward the coarse end of the dial from medium, and you get coarse meal, then grits/polenta (same grind! But technically a different varietal of corn).
The finer the grind, the smoother the texture of the finished product. But baked goods made with finer cornmeal grinds can also be denser due to the smaller pockets of air surrounding each grind in the baked product.
The coarser the grind, the fuller the texture of the finished product. Some call this “rustic.” Others call this “gritty.” I prefer “full” or “hearty,” because I like that texture. It feels authentic and satisfying. Some cooks like to let batter made with coarse cornmeal rest before baking to allow the corn to soak up some of the liquid.
That’s fine; just don’t stir in your baking soda until you’re ready to bake — or use double-acting baking powder in a 3-to-1 ratio instead. If your recipe calls for ½ teaspoon baking soda, use 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder. Baking powder is partially activated by the heat of the oven, so it can stand up to the acidic liquid ingredients in the batter better than baking soda can.
Stone Ground vs. Steel Ground
Brands that are stone ground (literally ground on stone rollers) generally say so on the package. Brands that are steel ground generally do not. What does that tell you about those two techniques?
Steel-ground meal is prepared for shelf life. This process removes the fibrous hull of the corn kernel as well as the nutrient-rich, flavor-packed germ, leaving the more shelf-stable endosperm behind.
Since the germ is where most of the kernel’s oil hides, it is more prone to spoilage than the endosperm (it’s also more prone to flavor, just sayin’). But since stoneground cornmeal contains the germ, it will stay fresher longer when stored in the freezer.
The Three Brands I Compared: Quaker, Bob’s Red Mill, Dixie Lily
Quaker Yellow Corn Meal
The Quaker Oats Company has been selling cornmeal since about 1901, so it has probably gotten its technique down by now. In fact, consistency is certainly a virtue of this brand. The packaging doesn’t specifically identify it as “fine” or “medium” grind, and it is definitely finer than the stoneground cornmeals I tried. But it’s coarser than a typical fine grind.
The packaging does say that the product is degerminated — a sure sign that the meal is ground on steel rollers that strip away the hull and germ. As a result, the Quaker cornmeal has about one-fourth of the dietary fiber as the stone-ground brands I tried. It also has almost no fat, yielding a stable product with a long shelf life.
The cornbread: The cake I made tasted just like the cornbread I remember from school cafeterias. And I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way. It’s comforting and reliable. It’s a great vehicle for butter and honey. But on the other hand, it’s not exciting on its own.
Use it for: Use this cornmeal for breading or for dusting your pizza stone when making homemade crust, if you like. Keep it on hand if you only occasionally cook with cornmeal and want it to remain usable for a long time. If you grew up with a certain kind of yellow cornbread, bake it with this cornmeal for nostalgia’s sake.
Bob’s Red Mill Medium Grind Cornmeal
This happens to be the go-to brand in my house, and testing it tooth-to-tooth with two other brands reinforced my opinion. The meal is a light yellow with a lot of variable texture, thanks to the stone-ground process, which adds interest to the baked product. It has a lot of earthy corn flavor. And I like that the company is employee-owned, too.
The cornbread: In my opinion, this is what cornbread should taste like: full texture, rustic crumb, and packed with corn flavor that holds its own against pan juices or a spoonful of jam.
Use it for: If you like a flavor-forward cornbread, this is the one for you. Also great as part of a grain blend in pancakes and waffles, muffins and specialty cakes. And it holds up well for breading fried foods.
Dixie Lily Stone Ground Corn Meal
I had never tried this brand before this test, and I really liked it. The packaging claims it’s “medium enriched white,” 100% whole kernel corn. The texture of the meal is more delicate than the Bob’s Red Mill, almost powdery. The flavor was more delicate, too.
The cornbread: The light texture of the meal yielded an airier cornbread that had more lift to it than either of the other two cakes I baked. It had more flavor than the Quaker but less than the Bob’s Red Mill.
Use it for: If you are looking for a subtly flavored, light cornbread, this might be the brand for you. It would also work well in recipes that call for a little more texture than straight-up all-purpose flour, like whole-grain muffins. The package includes a recipe for hush puppies, if you’re so inclined.
The Takeaway
It’s all just talk until you put it to the test, right? In one morning, I baked three cakes of Southern cornbread, all in the same skillet, in the same oven, with the same recipe. I even used the same mixing bowl, rinsed out between batches.
All of the ingredients were identical too, except for the cornmeal. For my test, I chose Quaker Yellow Corn Meal, Bob’s Red Mill Medium Grind Cornmeal (Whole Grain, Stone Ground), and Dixie Lily Stone Ground Corn Meal (Medium Enriched White).
Honestly, all three were good, and if I weren’t tasting them side-by-side, I would have been content with any of them. But tasted together, Bob’s Red Mill was the clear winner. It had a full but tender texture, great mouth feel, and delicious corn flavor.
Our second favorite was the Dixie Lily, which had the best lift of all three cornbreads. The texture was consistent and airy, but a tad dry. Most importantly, it just did not have as much flavor as the Bob’s Red Mill. Because the Bob’s Red Mill had more natural variety in the texture of its grind, the resulting cornbread had a little more interest, too. Overall, it was just a really tasty cornbread. And what’s better than that?
