Intuitive Cornbread

The gateway drug for teaspoon-free baking

Cornbread is one of my favorite ways to use up excess sourdough starter. It’s a malleable medium, provided you understand the role each ingredient plays (and it should go without saying that good-quality ingredients will improve the flavor). It’s one of the things that I always eyeball; because it’s so forgiving it always comes out well and since I’ve made it many times I have a pretty good sense of how much of everything is required—and how to incorporate various random leftovers or other ingredients when they present themselves.

This version was also whipped up with no recipe, but I did weigh as I went so I could write it down for you good people. Apart from the ubiquitous extra starter, this version was inspired by some ricotta (left over from a recent ravioli class) that needed using up, and a container of homegrown sweet corn hominy from ears that dried on stalk last summer (accidentally, during the drought) and which I subsequently nixtamalized.

Stay tuned for another post about that sometime soon. I was curious to see how sweet corn would behave as a dried grain, and how it would take to nixtamalization, and the answer on both counts is very well—surprisingly so. It’s got tons of flavor and a sturdy structure and I’m thrilled at this happy accident. Besides the hominy, I still have a decent amount of dried corn to play with later.

The recipe follows, but first let’s break down the role that each ingredient plays so that you can understand how to start using the Force when you make cornbread—rather than weighing or measuring everything like Big Cookbook wants you to. This understanding is also the key to making substitutions, which you should absolutely do because you will have different things on hand at different times, and above all because you can.