Ladies and Gentlemen of the forum:  A question.  Does Cornmeal go bad? This past weekend I made corn muffins, from a recipe that I’ve been using for years.  It contains, pretty much what you would expect a muffin to contain:  Cornmeal, All purpose flour, eggs, milk, salt, baking powder, butter, sugar.  When they came out of the oven, they were not the usual color…they were slightly browner/grey-er than they usually are…almost as if I had used whole wheat flour, instead of all purpose bleached.  When we ate them…they were bitter.  Since I’ve made this recipe many times, I know it wasn’t the recipe.  All the other ingredients were fresh.  The cornmeal was about a year old, but had been kept in the refrigerator in a zip lock bag.  Any ideas as to what the problem was?  - Since I assumed it was the cornmeal, I threw the rest of it out.

My baking science book reports that most corn products sold today are not whole grain. They’re milled from the endosperm portion, not the germ since corn germ is extremely high in oil (30 to 35%), which becomes rancid very quickly. That’s why the degerminated stuff is often enriched, to replace the vitamins and minerals lost in milling. If your brand was a whole grain product, I’d suspect rancidity for sure.

If your year-old corn meal was the degerminated kind, it might have been rancid anyway. It lasts “significantly longer” than whole grain - but ultimately does go bad. Nothing on storage, sorry, other than the general info that millers usually recommend flour be stored covered in cool, dry conditions no more than 6 months. If your fridge is on the humid side, that could have contributed to oxidation.

Thanks for the info!

Hi Bill

I have had whole grains like cornmeal and whole wheat flour go bad on me before I can use them completely up. Now what I do is keep them (along with nuts, etc.) in an airtight container in the freezer. After having a batch of whole wheat bread ruined because of rancid flour (and my bread batches are rarely small), I now smell/taste a little of the ingredient before I use it. I now only buy small amounts of this type of ingredient so I can use them up more quickly.

I kept it in the fridge…I will switch to the freezer for sure.

Interesting, I freeze lots of whole grain flours, but never corn meal and have never experienced it going bad. I always just keep it in the cabinet, but now you have me worried

Matthew…don’t worry.  Please don’t worry.  There are sooooo many things to worry and obsess about (trust me, I’m the king of obsessing needlessley) don’t add cornmeal to the list LOL

One other thing I thought of—did you bake it in your normal pan?  That’s the only other place I could think of where the bread might pick up and off flavor or color. I’ll try not to lose sleep over the cornmeal

Good thought…but yes…I used my usual muffin pan. Non-stick Williams Sonoma, sprayed with Baker’s Joy.

Fresh is best. You can smell rancid cornmeal by the way. It takes on a faint odor of turpentine and tastes bitter.
I posted a reference to this cornmeal some while back. If you can find it I recommend it highly.

http://www.estanciabuenaventura.com/polenta.html

Thanks for all your input.  It is really appreciated.

A great source for fresh stone ground cornmeal is:  <http://www.oakviewfarms.com/ in Alabama>

Wm. Joiner - 21 January 2011 02:05 PM

A great source for fresh stone ground cornmeal is:  <http://www.oakviewfarms.com/ in Alabama>

Thanks for this link.