Cornbread is a highly underrated side dish. You can whip up this deliciously sweet and moist homemade cornbread recipe with just a few pantry staples, and it makes a perfect side dish for breakfast, lunch, or dinner! Serve it slathered with butter at breakfast, crumbled into your soup or chili at lunch, or as a side with your collard greens and pork chops for dinner. It’s inexpensive, comforting, and seriously easy to make! So toss that boxed mix and let me show you how it’s done for real. ;)
What to Serve with Cornbread
Cornbread is a great side dish to go with any thick and hearty soup, stew, or chili. The cornbread can be dipped or crumbled into the saucy stews, where it absorbs all the flavor. I love it with Slow Cooker Vegetarian Lentil Chili, Weeknight Black Bean Chili, Glazed Pork Chops, Mexican Red Lentil Stew. This cornbread recipe also goes great with eggs for breakfast!
Cornbread Add-Ins
To make your cornbread a little more fun, consider stirring in some add-ins, like cheddar cheese, roasted corn kernels, diced green chiles, chili powder, or jalapeños, blueberries, or even some cooked sausage!
What Kind of Baking Dish to Use
While this glass pie dish is my favorite dish to bake my cornbread in, you can use just about any baking dish. This amount of batter would fit well in an 8×8 casserole dish, or a 10-inch cast iron skillet (although you should preheat the skillet as the oven preheats). Glass, ceramic, and cast iron work best, but you can also use metal baking dishes.
Make Corn Muffins Instead
Yes, you can pour this batter into an oiled muffin tin, filling each well about 3/4 full. Bake at the same temperature for 16-18 minutes, or until the tops are golden brown. This recipe will make about 10 corn muffins (see step by step photos below).
Easy Homemade Cornbread Recipe
Servings 8Ingredients
- 1 cup yellow cornmeal ($0.24)
- 1 cup all-purpose flour ($0.15)
- 1/4 cup sugar ($0.20)
- 1 Tbsp baking powder ($0.24)
- 1/2 tsp salt ($0.02)
- 1 cup milk ($0.31)
- 1 large egg ($0.27)
- 1/4 cup cooking oil ($0.08)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 425ºF and coat the inside of a 9-inch pie plate, cast iron skillet, or 8×8 casserole dish with non-stick spray (or butter for more flavor).
- In a large bowl, stir together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt until evenly combined.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, egg, and oil.
- Pour the bowl of wet ingredients into the bowl of dry ingredients and stir just until everything is moist. Avoid over stirring. It’s okay if there are a few lumps.
- Pour the batter into the prepared dish and bake for about 20 minutes, or until the top and edges are golden brown. Cut into 8 pieces and serve.
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Equipment
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Scroll down for the step by step photos!
How to Make Cornbread from Scratch – Step by Step Photos
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees and coat the inside of a 9-inch pie plate or 8×8 inch casserole dish with non-stick spray. In a large bowl, stir together 1 cup yellow cornmeal, 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup sugar, 1 Tbsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt. Make sure these are really well stirred together.
In a separate bowl, whisk together 1 cup milk, 1 large egg, and 1/4 cup cooking oil.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients…
And stir just until everything is moistened. You don’t want to over stir the batter because that can develop the gluten in the flour and make the end product a little rubbery, so it’s okay if there are a few lumps. No need to stir until everything is completely smooth.
Spread the batter into your prepared dish and bake for about 20 minutes, or until the top and edges are golden brown. The exact baking time may vary slightly based on your dish and your oven.
The top will crack a little and look all delicious.
Or you can pour the batter into an oiled muffin tin, filling each well about 3/4 full. You’ll get about 10 corn muffins.
Bake the muffins at the same temperature, for 16-18 minutes, or until they’re golden brown on top.
I hope this will work in my muffin tin – I’m already using both of my baking dishes for other foods for this meal!!
It should! :)
I went to go whip up this recipe, but realized I actually didn’t have any cornmeal (though I SWORE I did!). I ended up using Garbanzo bean flour (aka Gram flour or besan). Let me tell you, this was a WONDERFUL thing. Instead of a baking dish, I put them in a muffin tin and they cooked a little faster than the 20 mins in this recipe. Anyway, this substitution has a lot more protein, so these puppies kept me full. Thanks, Beth!
Very interesting! Thank you for sharing how that turned out. I would have never guessed that garbanzo bean flour would work in place of cornmeal!
I just baked this to accompany a chilli I made yesterday. Cornbread isn’t really a thing here in Ireland so I made it with polenta instead of the cornmeal. And because I wanted to use up some buttermilk, I used that in place of the milk (I only had soya milk in the fridge). Oh, and I accidentally used self-raising instead of all-purpose (is that the same as ‘plain’?). In any case, it turned out perfectly. Can’t wait for my dinner now!
I accidentally made this as buckwheat cornbread, and since it tasted rather delicious like that I figured I’d share my accident.
I only had a 1/2 cup measuring cup clean so I properly measured out two 1/2 cup scoops of corn meal, and then, instead of flour, I accidentally scooped up and dumped in 1/2 a cup of buckwheat pancake mix. I could hardly put it back at that point, so I just shrugged and added 1/2 a cup of wheat flour (whole wheat pastry flour because that’s what I had on hand) and only 3 tsp of baking powder since the pancake mix had some baking powder in it.
The result was slightly blue but delicious. And between the buckwheat and the whole wheat pastry flour, pretty healthy.
Ha! I love it! Happy accidents are the best. :D
Is there any way to make this gluten free? A particular flour substitute I could use? I have a relative that has Celiac Disease and I’m trying to find a way to cook this for her. Thanks!
Hmm, unfortunately I have no experience with using gluten free flours, so I’m not sure of the best route.
@Ann
I don’t have personal experience with gluten free baking, but my most trusted baking resource is King Arthur Flour, and they have a whole section on gluten free baking. I found this cornbread recipe there. http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/gluten-free-cornbread-recipe
if you look at their blog archives, there is a lot of useful gluten free baking information including tutorials. http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/category/gluten-free/
This specific blog post is the how-to for making the cornbread. http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2011/06/01/gluten-free-cornbread-tall-tender-moist-marvelous/
Good luck with your endeavor!
Donna
Can you use powdered milk in place of regular milk for this recipe? I’m not a milk drinker and it’s not worth it for me to keep it hanging around for recipes. Thank you for all the great recipes and the SNAP food challenge; it really opened up my eyes regarding food and how chalenging it is for people on this program. God bless you Beth.
I’ve never used reconstituted powdered milk in place of regular milk in baking, so I don’t know how that would affect it. :(
If you heat the 10 inch cast iron skillet in the oven while making the batter, grease the skillet with a spray oil product, and pour the batter into the sizzling hot skillet you will get a beautiful dome on the corn bread and it will be lighter for the steam introduced into it.
Presenting it in the skillet, yellow on black, looks great as well. Keeps the bread warm through the whole meal too.
I’m going to try that next time! Thanks for the tip. :)
Especially bacon fat! We save ours in a mug in the fridge. Gives the cornbread a nice flavor enhancement.
I love this recipe I already made it three times today! Two of them for giving away to family though:) I just omit the sugar, since I like hearty foods and add grated cheddar in the dough. Mmmm
I’m adding corn kernels to mine. Wish me luck!
I just made this corn bread and it is delicious! Thanks so much for the recipe. Hubby loves it too :)
We are having this tonight with the last of the jambalaya I’d stashed in the freezer.
How does this compare to Jiffy cornbread? I’ve tried the Jiffy and found it too sweet. That being said, it’s also my only experience with cornbread.
This one is fairly sweet as well. I grew up on Jiffy, so I’m a bit bias towards it, and this recipe definitely reminds me of it a little.
Here we make cornbread that is more like cake…using 3-1 flour to cornmeal (I have a recipe that makes a 9X13 cake pan…way too much for 2 people) do you think that I could use 1 1/2 cups flour and 1/2 cup corn meal in this recipe? I wish my husband liked this type of cornbread but it was a miracle that he like the other one I found so I will stick with that one if needed ;)
p.s. he doesn’t like couscous either or anything that is “grainy” haha
If you change the flour/cornmeal ratio, that might mess up the moisture ratio, so I can’t say for sure if that would work without testing it. :(
I substituted a can of creamed corn for the milk and it came out moist and delicious. Love this easy recipe!
Hi Beth – I’m not sure where to find cornmeal in Australia….I’ve tried researching if I can use polenta but it’s a bit hard to know – what would you suggest? Love your blog – bought your book! It’s my survival guide :)
I think polenta might be ground a bit more coarse than cornmeal. Cornmeal is very fine and almost has a bit of corn powder mixed in. Almost like half way between polenta and corn flour. I’m not quite sure if this recipe would work with polenta, since I haven’t tested it, so I think your best bet might be to check online stores or if you have any specialty food or ethnic food stores in your area.
Elisha, if you live in Melbourne you can go to USA foods and pick some up. They also have cornmeal for online order if you don’t live in Melbourne! http://www.usafoods.com.au/Baking-and-Dessert/Cake-Mixes-Baking/Hodgson-Mill-Yellow-Corn-Meal-2lbs
I made another cornbread receipe with polenta and it seemed to work fine. Another Aussie here with no idea where to find cornmeal!
I made mine with Polenta. I think it adds a nice texture to the finished product. Give it a go :)