Southern Spoon Bread
For light, tender spoon bread, choose fine-grind cornmeal and use beaten egg whites instead of baking powder for lift.
The challenge: To make a spoon bread, you must first whisk cornmeal into a simmering liquid and let it thicken into a "mush," as though you were cooking oatmeal or farina. To the cooled mush you add eggs, salt, butter, and other ingredients. The mixture is poured into a baking dish and baked. The resulting dish should be light as air with a tender, rich crumb. As with many historic dishes, however, ingredients and cooking techniques vary enormously. To find the spoon bread recipe we liked best, we started by figuring out the best way to make the initial corn mush.

The solution: The act of stirring cornmeal into simmering milk can be tricky; if you don't do it properly, the meal can separate from the liquid and turn into a bunch of lumps rather than a smooth mush. Start whisking like crazy and don't stop until the mush is thickened, two to four minutes. It's not much of a time investment when you consider the alternative 20 to 30 minutes of gentle stirring in a double boiler. The oldest recipes for spoon bread call for whole eggs, not separated, but we found that eggs separated and beaten to produce a light, high souffle. The most important element, however is the type of cornmeal used. yellow corn, more common in the North, and white corn, more common in the South, were both fine, the major difference being that the white produced a bread that was slightly milder in flavor. Most important, is that the corn is a fine grind, which produces a considerably smoother texture.

For good measure: If you can't get fine grind in your local store, you can approximate it by putting a medium-grind cornmeal in the food processor or, even better, in the blender. The processing will take several minutes, but eventually you will have little clouds of powder-fine meal in the bottom of the bowl.

CLASSIC SPOON BREAD

Serves 6 to 8

A standard eight-inch soufflé dish works beautifully, but any straight-sided, heavy pan will work, even an iron skillet. Because the spoon bread soon falls from its spectacular height, serve it as quickly as possible; even in its deflated state, though, spoon bread still tastes delicious. Serve leftovers with maple or cane syrup.

3 cups half-and-half
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup fine-ground white or yellow cornmeal
2–3 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus extra for soufflé dish
3 large eggs, warmed to room temperature, then separated

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 1 1/2-quart soufflé dish.

2. Bring half-and-half and salt to simmer in large, heavy saucepan. Reduce heat to low. Slowly whisk in cornmeal. Continue whisking until cornmeal thickens and develops satin sheen, 2 to 4 minutes. Turn off heat and stir in butter; set mush aside.

3. Whisk yolks and 1 to 2 teaspoons water together in small bowl until lemon-colored and very frothy. Stir them into cooled mush, a little at a time to keep yolks from cooking. Beat egg whites to stiff but not dry peaks; gently fold them into mush mixture.

4. Pour mixture into buttered soufflé dish. Bake in oven until spoon bread is golden brown and risen above dish rim, about 45 minutes. Serve immediately.

SPOON BREAD WITH CHEDDAR CHEESE

Serves 6 to 8

Follow recipe for Classic Spoon Bread, stirring 1 cup (2 ounces) grated sharp cheddar cheese along with the butter.

November, 1996
Original article and recipes by Cynthia Hizer