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I recently made some corn bread on my own from scratch for the first time. The flavour was perfect as was the general firmness/crumbliness of the bread. However, the corn meal in the recipe resulted in an extremely gritty eating experience. It was like eating uncooked steel cut oats. But it's not like you can make corn bread without corn meal...

Anyway, every other corn bread I have ever had, whether it is made from scratch or from a pre-packaged mix, has not had this gritty quality.

I used a relatively fresh purchased package of yellow stone ground corn meal. It was open for about 3 days since I used a tablespoon in another recipe, but I stored it in an airtight container in the freezer (which is apparently what one should do).

Did I purchase bad corn meal? Is there something I can do to modify the recipe and make it less gritty?

Here is the recipe I am using.

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Just to clarify- the grittiness was from uncooked granules of corn? Steel cut oats are much larger than cornmeal. Did you mean they were as hard as the oats or actually the same size? – Sobachatina Oct 30 '12 at 18:41
@Sobachatina Just as hard. Not the same size. Thanks though. Good clarification. – gnomed Nov 1 '12 at 14:41

4 Answers

up vote 7 down vote accepted

If you don't want gritty bread, use finely milled polenta. Roughly milled polenta is like semolina, and results in a gritty batter. Finely milled polenta is like flour, and results in a smooth batter.

I don't know the proper names for the different milling grades in English. I don't mean cornflour, which is pure maize starch from the inside of the maize kernel. I mean whole maize kernels milled so the particles are the same size as wheat flour. It is yellow and tastes the same way as the rough one, only the texture is different.

The two types of polenta differ in their water absorption and soaking times, so you may want to use a recipe developed for the fine milled type, or tweak your own recipe.

To give you a better example, here is what you need:

enter image description here

You don't want to use the rough form, which looks like this:

enter image description here

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3  
+1. I'm not sure where the OP is from, but generally in the US, we call the stuff you make cornbread out of cornmeal (and there are variations in fineness). Polenta usually refers to coarser stuff for, well, making polenta (even though one can of course make fine polenta). – Jefromi♦ Oct 30 '12 at 19:40
Thanks. I have a lot to learn... – gnomed Nov 1 '12 at 14:39
up vote 3 down vote

I'd try letting the batter rest for a bit, like a 15 minutes.

This link talks about letting stuff rest for other reasons, but it talks about letting stuff absorb other stuff. It's very scientific.

http://www.thekitchn.com/food-science-why-some-batters-76098

It may be different from other things you've tried because of the coarseness of the meal that you've gotten. I don't know if there's any sort of regulation on the labeling for ground corn meal...

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I was thinking something along these lines. The dough seemed so thick that I was worried any resting might dry it out, but I'll probably still give it a shot next time. – gnomed Oct 30 '12 at 18:28
You can rest it covered in saran wrap (or even just a plate) and that should be ok. – Allan Chow Oct 30 '12 at 18:32
2  
I wouldn't rest the batter, because the leavening will spend itself in the meantime. If you suspect it is a matter of the corn meal not getting hydrated, soak it first in part of your liquid, and use the soaked corn meal in the batter. – rumtscho♦ Oct 30 '12 at 18:32
1  
The basic recipe is similar to a pancake batter which is often rested for a while so perhaps resting this batter would not be detrimental to the leavening. – Kristina Lopez Oct 31 '12 at 4:00
The baking powder is most likely dual acting and will still give enough lift for cornbread after resting. – Sobachatina Oct 31 '12 at 13:10
up vote 3 down vote

You can soak the cornmeal in water overnight if you remember to reduce the water in your recipe to compensate for it. In your recipe, you can soak it in the milk and then you don't need to do any compensating.

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up vote 1 down vote

Just to add to rumtscho's response…

There are several different levels of coarseness of corn meal, from very fine (corn flour) to very coarse. If you want your corn bread to be less gritty, use a finer grind of corn meal.

(If you don't want to waste the corn meal you've already got, you can grind it finer in a coffee grinder.)

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