Bannock and Cornbread Recipes

[GeneRector]

   Howdy! I had never heard of Bannock until about 3 weeks ago. Seems to be pretty popular up in Canada. I could eat cornbread almost every day and not get tired of it. I had used the premixed packages until recently when I started making my own. What I made was not any better than the premixes. Thus, if you have a great recipe for cornbread or bannock, please share your recipe. Always, Gene
 
 

[BUGEYE]

get yourself a sack of aunt-jemima cornmeal mix and follow that recipe on the bag.  I also add two tablespoons of olive oil to the mix.
I set the skillet in the oven to heat as the oven heats (375 degrees)
when they are both hot, I take out the skillet and spray it generously with Pam, then pour in my well mixed batter.  it's the best I've ever had, and my skillet hasn't been washed in 30 years, just wipe with a paper towel.

[subdjoe]

Set your oven to 425 F and let it heat while you take:

Two cups corn meal, two cups self rising flour, 1 TBS baking powder (if you don't have SR flour, use AP, 2 TBS baking powder, 1 to 2 tsp salt).  Mix together.  (Set your 12" black iron skillet on the stove, to get screaming hot, meanwhile:)  Add two eggs and 2 to 2 1/2 cups buttermilk (if you don't have buttermilk, you can use regular milk, or clabber regular milk with a touch of cider vinegar) to the dry ingredients.  Mix well.  Add about half a stick of butter (or some bacon grease) to the skillet, move it around to keep from scorching, pour the melted grease into the batter and mix like hell.  Pour batter into skillet, should sizzle as it hits.  Place in over for about 20 minutes.  Remove when golden brown and delicious.  Cut yerself two wedges. Cut in half, slather with butter.  Take one and put some honey on it too.  Use that one for dessert.


ADDED:

At Safeway, a 5# bag of housebrand corn meal is just under $5.  WalMart has SR flour at about $2 for 5#.  Eggs - call it two bucks a dozen.  To me the packaged mixes just aren't worth it.  You don't really save any time and unless you can find them at o, such a deal! they cost a lot more than doing it from scratch.

Also, the above is a quick knock together approximation of what I usually do.  If I'm making if to please my wife I use a bit more flour and less corn meal, and add a touch of sugar. If I'm making it for myself, the corn meal goes up to 3 cups and the flour down to a cup.  I'll sometimes chop up bacon and onions, fry them up some, and add them to the batter.  Play with it.

[GeneRector]

   Howdy! Some really great recipes! Thanks! I had several people tell me to use the recipe on the Aunt Jemima cornmeal bag. I had never thought to cook it in an iron skillet; however, it was recommended by several people I know. Maybe some more recipes will be coming!  Always, Gene
 
 

[Swampman]

Real cornbread doesn't have sugar or flour in it.  Martha White self-rising corn meal is the best.  One egg, and butter milk to get a proper batter is the way it's made.  Preheat a cast iron skillet in a 425 oven with bacon grease, oil, or shortening.  Dump your batter in the hot skillet and bake for 20 minutes or until it's brown enough.  Don't get yellow corn meal that's for yankees.  Chopped onions, bacon, or halopenos in the batter is good too.
In the south we consider what they eat up north to be cake and not cornbread.  Our's ain't sweet or fluffy.

[Empty Quiver]

Real cornbread doesn't have sugar or flour in it.  Martha White self-rising corn meal is the best.  One egg, and butter milk to get a proper batter is the way it's made.  Preheat a cast iron skillet in a 425 oven with bacon grease, oil, or shortening.  Dump your batter in the hot skillet and bake for 20 minutes or until it's brown enough.  Don't get yellow corn meal that's for yankees.  Chopped onions, bacon, or halopenos in the batter is good too.
In the south we consider what they eat up north to be cake and not cornbread.  Our's ain't sweet or fluffy.

But you'll put suger in ice tea... go figure.

[Empty Quiver]

Got ahead of myself.
 
Don't quite know how "proper" my bannock would be considered, but I'll offer this. Keep in mind I don't measure jack, most especially in camp. All figures are approximate and meant only as a starting point.
 
3 cups of self rising flour ( or turn it such by adding about 3Tbs of baking powder and some salt 1tsp I suppose)
1/2 cup of crisco
1 3/4 cups of buttermilk, milk, or water ( in decending order of preference )
3/4" of frying oil in a hot skillet 325 degrees or so (Same as fish fry)
Mix the above as you would if making biscuits, with the exception being the dough should be much more plyable than most are used to working biscuits. Stretch and flatten out to roughly 5/8" thick maybe even 7/8" depending on what you are wanting. The thicker you go keep in mind you'll need to turn down the heat a bit to avoid burnt' outside and raw middle.
 
What it boils down to is fried biscuits not pancakes. The crisco in the mix can easily be left out, mine is there because I sorta just make my own bisquick to take afield and use it for whatever I need flour for, be it fish, pancakes, cobblers, biscuits bannock. So much easier to mix the flour and shortning in the stand mixer at home than at camp when its 20 degrees and the crisco is about like saltwater taffy.
 
I'm a firm believer in measureing nothing and making food to suit me. Some days I like a sweet cornbread with plenty of wheat flour, and others a rustic corn only mix seems appropriate. Chile's are welcome as are some fire roasted corn kernals in the rustic style.
 
A guy's got to be willing to experiment. Remember it's only one meal you are possibly going to ruin. keep track of what you are doing till you find what you want, throw away all the failed recipes, and save good ideas. I used to toss a scrap of paper into the SR flour bin with notes on what I thought would be a good change for future. Now I know that I prefer to mix biscuits very wet, using buttermilk makes it easier but in my mind that is its main contribution, and roll them out fairly thick and cook on a stone at 475 for 11 minutes. It's 80% feel and 20% recipe, ask anyone who makes good biscuits and I believe they will agree.
 

[subdjoe]

Got ahead of myself.
 
Don't quite know how "proper" my bannock would be considered, but I'll offer this. Keep in mind I don't measure jack, most especially in camp. All figures are approximate and meant only as a starting point.

Sounds like the way I usually cook.  More a cook by method rather than recipe.  You know that you need so much dry to so much liquid, and so much leavening to so much flour.  Once you get methods down you have an infinite variety you can cook up.  Then learn what you can substitute for what, what you can leave out, what flavors don't go together at all.

  In camp at reenactments I use a coffee cup for all my "cup" measurements, and I know about what a tsp and a TBS look like in my had.  People ask me for a recipe and I have to make it again and try to write it down.

[Defoe]

To bugeyes recipe add some cracklings. Or
Add one of those small cans of creamed corn and chopped red pepper.

[Swampman]

A small well drained can of Mexicorn is also good in cornbread.

[fatercat]

pepers, lots of hot assed pepers.  datil if you can get them.  so hot you'll have to throw cotton balls at your ass to wipe the next morning.

[Lloyd Smale]

bet i would be good with sauage gravy poured on it. But then what isnt?

[jpshaw]

My recipe for cornbread. 
  1 cup cornmeal
  1/3 cup all purpose flour
  2 tsp baking powder (I use Featherweight)
  3 packets of Splenda
  2/3 cup of milk
  3 Tbs of Vegetable oil
  1 egg, beaten
  A long drizzle of honey
 
Mix the dry, then the wet (except for the honey) then add the wet to the dry and stir.  Add the honey to the mix and stir some more.  Grease an 8 inch cast iron skillet and pour it in.  450 degrees for about 20 minutes.  Haint bad.  Swampman wouldn't approve since it does have suger and flour in it though.  Gonna have to try some of that Mexicorn too.

[Swampman]

Nice cake recipe.  I'll have to make some for dessert.

[jpshaw]

Nice cake recipe.  I'll have to make some for dessert.

Gotta luv it.  Made some last night and covered it with honey too.  Tonight I will use the rest with maple syrup.  Nuthin wrong with dessert now Swamp.  BTW mine originally came off of a bag of Pioneer Cornmeal but all recipes change over time for personal taste.
 
Post your recipe Swampman.  I'll give it a shot.  Hey, who knows you might win a convert.

[Swampman]

See reply #4....

[Oldshooter]

Ok now I'm hungry.

[Ranger99]

if you're going to eat cornbread as
a dessert as in with your coffee,
it won't taste right unless you use
ribbon cane syrup on top.




i have to go with the late great john jobson
on the bannock.
all purpose flour
fresh baking powder
cold water


mix
cook
eat




my folks never grew wheat. they had
yellow corn and had yellow corn bread.
they closest to a yankee that was in my
family would probably be my maternal
great-great-great grandpa. he was a brit.


each cup of yellow cornmeal gets a pinch of salt
(if you have any) and leavening.
if using buttermilk or straight from the tap,
use baking soda.
if using sweetmilk, use baking powder.
an egg per if you have one.
a tsp of bacon grease per
enough milk to make a thick batter.
goes in a greased iron skillet
(i usually use a #8)
greased with bacon grease or lard.
cook
eat


you can make hot water cornbread, or what
my folks called hoecakes.
cup yellow cornmeal
pinch of salt
tsp bacon grease or lard
enough boiling water to make a thick
batter
drop a goodly spoonful of batter in a
skillet of hot grease to make a cake
cook
eat


or if your'e in your time machine, knock the
handle out of your hoe at the far end of the
cottonfield, and use it for a griddle to
cook the cakes on a small fire. make the
batter thicker.
cook
eat and give thanks to god you had
something to eat today besides
poke or dandelion greens

[mechanic]

Follow Swampman's recipe for cornbread.  Take it right out of a hot skillet and crumble it up in some cold buttermilk.  Add some Vidalia onion chopped up. 
 
Thats supper for me sometimes. 
 
Ben

[Swampman]

In the south we don't eat yellow corn meal. 

[Oldshooter]

In the part of the South Louisisana and Texas I'm from , we do

[jpshaw]

In the part of the South Louisisana and Texas I'm from , we do

In North Louisiana and East Texas we do too.
 
Swampman, I've looked at reply #4 but there are no amounts.  That could be 1/2 cup cornmeal and 5 gallons of buttermilk.  We need amounts and is that an 8" or 10" skillet?  I'm planning on making some of your cornbread.  I will have to forego the "Self Rising" aspect  of your cornmeal though since I'm a heart patient and can't take that much added salt.  I never assume mine is better until I try someone else's.

[jpshaw]

you can make hot water cornbread, or what
my folks called hoecakes.
cup yellow cornmeal
pinch of salt
tsp bacon grease or lard
enough boiling water to make a thick
batter
drop a goodly spoonful of batter in a
skillet of hot grease to make a cake

I will have to try this too.  Always loved hot water cornbread but never made it.

[Swampman]

I don't use a measure, I just add liquid until I have batter.

[jpshaw]

I don't use a measure, I just add liquid until I have batter.

OK, I'm gonna wing it here.  I will start with 1 and 1/2 cups cornmeal, add 2 tsp of baking powder (Self Rising is simply cornmeal, baking powder and salt)add 1 egg and finally enough buttermilk to get the right consistancy.  Then that should fit an 8 inch skillet.  Just finished a panful of cornbread last night so I might wait a little bit before making this.  Will report back when I do.  Now I gotta go find some "white" cornmeal.

[Swampman]

That's the way I do it except I probably use more than 1/2 cup of meal.

[Ranger99]

don't forget to take into account to
leave room for your batter or dough
to rise so you won't have any extra messes
to deal with
good luck

[jpshaw]

don't forget to take into account to
leave room for your batter or dough
to rise so you won't have any extra messes
to deal with
good luck

My original recipe used about 1 1/2 cups of cornmeal and flour and fit an 8 inch good.  I fiqured this to do the same since it has the same amount only it's all cornmeal.  Thought a 10 inch skillet would make it too thin.  Swampy should try mine.  With some syrup it would make a him a good dessert.

[Swampman]

I actually like sweet cornbread too, I just don't think of it in the same way.

[Ranger99]

the sweet shouldn't be in the corn
bread. it should be on top after
you pour your ribbon cane syrup on
to eat with your coffee after supper