A while ago, the first thing I tried to make consciously gluten-free was cornbread – only, since I had purchased a bag of coconut flour, I wanted to make gluten-free coconut cornbread. Kind of niche, maybe? Who knows. In any case, amongst the paleo and the plain weird, I didn’t really get anything I wanted, and I started down the fermented gluten-free bread route.

Today, however, we wanted something to accompany a leftovers lunch, including the use of a half jar of maize or corn kernels. So it was that I took a look on the internet, finding this recipe. A great looking recipe, but since I live in Spain we find most non-standard (and nonUHT / longlife) milk products very hard to find. Also, we tend to be reasonably lacto-free (that is, we eat butter and cheese). Didn’t have enough butter, of course. So I made it as follows:

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup butter, softened
• 1/3 cup margarine
• 4 tablespoons coco sugar
• 2 eggs, divided, whites beaten to soft peaks
• 1 cup water
• 1 heaped tablespoon almond milk powder
• 1 cup flour blend # 2 + 1/3 tsp xanthan gum
• 2/3 cup yellow cornmeal
• 2 teaspoons gluten-free baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup corn kernels

Method:

Cream butter and sugar. Add egg yolks and mix (I didn’t mix). Mix flour, salt, and powders and incorporate, mixing the cup of water in gradually to avoid clumping, and the corn kernels at the end. I then folded in the egg whites and poured into a lined loaf tin. About 25-35 minutes at 425 F / 220 C.

Results:

This was by far the best loaf I have made gluten-free. Of course it was – it was chock-full of gums n powders – but hell, it was nice to eat a light, fully flavoured, cornbread. It reminded me of the bread at Watts Grocery in Durham NC. Update: I repeated this recipe a day later using only buckwheat flour. The only noticeable change was significant crumbliness compared with the earlier version.