Ingredients:
1 ¼ cups buttermilk. I have not tried this yet with substituting vinegar + milk, but I will when I run out my current bottle of buttermilk.
1 ½ cups Quaker corn meal.
½ cup King Arthur all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder. I’ve had trouble w/ generic store brands; name brand seems to work better.
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 large egg
3 strips of thick, center cut bacon.
Cayenne pepper -- I probably use about ¼ teaspoon but I don’t measure it.
Directions:
Preheat oven to 375, warm 10” cast iron skillet in the oven -- get it hot.
In a separate cast iron skillet, fry the bacon until crispy but don’t burn the grease. (Could do this in the same skillet, but I like to have a bit more temperature control...I think.) You want the fat to stay hot while preparing the below, so cast iron retains the heat well without micromanaging it.
Remove the bacon and chop into small pieces.
Mix up the dry ingredients well in a mixing bowl.
In a smaller bowl, beat egg and add buttermilk.
Mix the wet ingredients with the dry, add in the bacon, and mix it “just enough”--don’t overdo it, or you’ll have something awful.
Remove the 10” cast iron from the oven. Pour in the bacon drippings and coat the pan
Pour the mixture into the grease-covered skillet, smooth/shape it til it’s roughly even.