Corny Cornbread

Corny cornbread. There should be a joke. It seems like it would be really easy to come up with one or write one from memory. I’m much too tired to do it. Three hours of sleep will do it. And going up to the barista and saying ‘give me something with  a lot of caffeine doesn’t help much.

I had my first open water certification scuba class last night. It was just classroom and playing with some equipment. Then I was on the phone with a friend until after 11 pm. Then I kept waking up until about 3 am and was wide awake at that point. Three hours of sleep may be over-generous.

The cool thing {and I can admit it may only be cool to me} is that scuba is a lot easier than it seems. Last December I went on three dives. Prior to the dives, I had to demonstrate competency of some skills in a pool (or confined water as they say in the scuba world). Once I actually dove, I realized even though it sounds complicated everything they teach you comes naturally once you are in the water. However, one thing I did not learn in December was how heavy all the equipment weighs. In December, the dive team did everything. Last night we learned how to assemble the gear, again it’s pretty easy, but sounded complicated reading how to do it in the book.It’s just heavy.

Now I know I should make a connection between scuba and The Bread Baker’s Apprentice Cornbread here, but with lack of sleep the only thing I can come up with is that making cornbread is as easy as it reads, but because it is a Peter Reinhart recipe there is a required overnight step~soaking cornmeal in buttermilk~to get more flavor. Making cornbread is not like scuba at all. Actually, if I think about it more, making bagels is more like scuba. They sound more complicated to make and there is buoancy and float testing involved.

Or maybe the connection is that I made the cornbread more complicated than I needed to. I decided to make 1 1/2 times the recipe and bake the cornbread in a jelly roll pan so I would have a lot of cornbread that is a little flatter. I also made the cornbread without the bacon. I made it more complicated by forgetting that I only increased the recipe by half and would add in double the ingredients. Sometimes this was easy to correct and sometimes it was a little trickier, like with the baking powder.

In spite of my mistakes,  the cornbread was a success. The fresh corn makes it wonderful. Like one of my eaters said, it’s like eating a garden. I thought it needed a little more salt (I should have accidentally doubled that ingredient), but everyone else thought it was perfect.

In addition to serving it straight, I made some cubes, toasted them in the oven, and made a Caprese salad panzanella. Delicious!

If you would like more information about The Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge, please visit HERE.

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