Carter White House Cornbread - From Plains, Ga with Love 🌽

Southern Living, Oct. 17, 2024. Ed. 🥜

From Plains, with love. Southern Living, Carter White House Cornbread PHOTO:

Active Time:
15 mins
Total Time:
35 mins
Servings:
8
JUMP TO RECIPE

In her cookbook Baking in the American South, author Anne Byrn shares the story of President Carter's White House cornbread:

Jimmy Carter, thirty-ninth president of the United States, was raised on a Plains, Georgia, farm where his family grew cotton, peanuts, and a little sugarcane. “We had it ingrained in us that hard work was an important part of life,” Carter wrote in The Best of Georgia Farms, published by the Georgia Department of Agriculture.

“Our bell rang every morning at four o’clock—before daybreak. We would get up, dress, go to the barn, catch the mules, put our plowstocks on the back of the wagon, and drive the mules and wagons to the fields . . . All of the cultivation, all of the breaking of the land, all of the harvesting was done with hand labor and mules. We didn’t get our first truck until the year I went off to college, which was in the winter of 1941.” Even when Carter was in the White House, Plains farm life never left him.

The White House chef Henry Haller became well versed on baking cornbread, and this was the recipe he made for President Carter. The secret, according to Haller, was letting the batter rest before baking so the cornmeal soaked in the warm milk and butter to make a smoother, softer cornbread.

Ingredients

8 Tbsp. (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons, plus 1 tsp., at room temperature, for greasing the pan
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup finely ground white cornmeal
1/2 cup finely ground yellow cornmeal
1 Tbsp. granulated sugar
4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1 cup whole milk
1 large egg

Directions: Heat the oven to 425ºF, with a rack in the lower middle.

Grease an 8-inch square cake pan with the 1 teaspoon butter and set aside... More,
https://www.southernliving.com/carter-white-house-cornbread-8717221

- President Jimmy Carter, wiki ❤
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter