corn for flour

[atilgan]

I learned about corn types by reading the forum but I have several questions. If I am planting corn for making corn bread what are my options? Is dented corn is as good as the flour corn? If so can you recommend yellow colored dented corn varieties with strong grow habit because it is very windy where I plant. Why are flint corn and flour corn are usually listed together in seed catalogs? What is soft flint? What about flint corn for corn bread?
Thanks in advance

[blueadzuki]

Whew, that is a lot of ground to cover. But I'll try my best.

For cornbread it depends. Carol Deppe says that more or less any corn works for wet batter cornbread, but as I do not personally eat cornbread, I do no know how that differs from other corn breads.

Basically, what you are looking at is how much soft versus hard starch is in the corn kernel. Flour is nearly pure soft starch, hard flint nearly pure hard. the other are in between.

Dent is basically a hard/soft starch mix where there is a hole in the top of the hard starch layer that causes the kernel to collapse in and make a dent or dimple in the top of the kernel (soft starch shrinks more than hard). Most commercial corn is dent.

Flint and flour are often listed together because the two can sort of grade into each other. Yo can get "soft flints" which have as much (or more) soft starch as a dent. There are also "flint/flour corns" which have varying amounts of the two on different kernels on the ear.

Hard flint corn is more often used for things like Polenta than strictly corn bread.

In general, the softer the corn, the finer the flour you are going to get. The tradeoff is that the softer your corn, the easier it is for pests to get into it.

[DarJones]

I grew up both eating cornbread and growing the corn it is made from. Flint corn is best for polenta or hard grits. Flour corn is best for breads similar to tortillas. Dent corn is best for cornbread. The very best corn bread corn is from heirloom varieties such as Nothstine Dent. There is a locally grown white corn in my area that is superb for corn meal. Find a good dent corn that grows well in your area to make the best cornbread. Several seed companies carry corn that has been selected specifically for making the best quality corn bread. Several years ago, I had a huge crop of Cherokee Squaw corn and had a tomato plant customer whose wife makes tortillas. She made me a batch of blue corn tortillas from some of the Cherokee Squaw. They were very good tortillas, but the texture was not quite as smooth as it would have been if I had grown a flour corn like Cherokee White. Cherokee Squaw is pretty good for making blue cornbread.

[grano]

It's mainly personal preference. I prefer a cake-like cornbread. So I sieve dent corn and use the floury part for bread and the flinty part for grits.

[atilgan]

Thank you very much for the comments and suggestions. I purchased Nothstine (dent) and Dacota ivory (floor). I will try to grow these and compare