Sprouted Whole Grain Blue Corn Cornbread

When you grow up in the south, you eat a lot of cornbread. This is my whole-grain adaption of the recipe I grew up on. I'm pretty sure it originates from the back of a package of cornmeal. If you want to revert to the original, substitute melted Crisco for the olive oil, use AP white flour and you choice of bagged cornmeal. Note that this recipe does not have any sugar in it. Like well-done steak, sugar in cornbread is a sign of moral turpitude.

• ~4 oz blue corn, ground into cornmeal (1 cup is the goal)
• ~4 oz wheat or grain mix, ground into flour (1 cup is the goal)
• 2 teaspoons Baking Powder
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
  
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 cup milk (buttermilk is also great)
• 1/4 cup oil (I like walnut and olive, but vegetable oil works as well)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (204 C).

Spray a 6-muffin tin with olive oil.

My corn of choice is organic blue corn from Heartland Mill. The non-blue pieces you see are the remnants of some Mandan Bride's Corn from my local grain CSA (Pioneer Valley). that were in the corn bin.

I grind the corn using the metal wheels on my Retsel. I'm going for a fairly fine grind here, I don't want grits. See the video.

For the wheat, I had a sprouted grain mix that I had dried out a few days ago consisting of Wheat, Rye, Barley, Triticale, Oats, Spelt, Kamut, Quinoa, Sesame, Millet and Amaranth. If you grind nothing but Wheat, you'll get a better rise (the picture of the muffins on the hand towel are a pure Wheat/Corn mix. The rest are of the mix.

Once milled, combine the cornmeal, flour, salt and baking powder into a bowl.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg well, then beat in the milk and oil. Combine the wet and dry ingredients, and stir for 90-120 seconds. You want the moisture to start getting absorbed by the dry mix. When no longer 'pourable', add the mix to the muffin tin, filling up to just below the edge.

Bake for ~25 minutes, until the tops are nicely browned and a knife inserted down the center comes out clean.