If you're serving stuffing, you may be tempted to fall back on supermarket stuffing. Must you really sacrifice quality for convenience?
Supermarket stuffing offers unbelievable ease, especially if you have to make a large quantity, but it isn't nearly as good as homemade.
We wanted to make ample stuffing to serve 16 (or more).
Our first decision was to select the right bread. We liked cornbread because it's very sturdy, but not tough or sweet.
We also liked the density and slight sweetness of high-quality white sandwich bread. Regardless of the bread, drying
the bread before making stuffing was crucial for texture and flavor. Cornbread stuffing especially can get mushy and
lose its structure if the bread isn't sufficiently dried. We found that the two breads did differ in required amounts. The
amount of cornbread seemed skimpy compared to regular bread, but cornbread didn't shrink as much as regular
bread when it dried, and it blew up to nearly twice its size as it soaked up the liquid before cooking. Cooking the
stuffing alongside—not in—the bird made the stuffing easy. In fact, we could assemble the stuffing 24 hours ahead
of time, refrigerate it, and just let it stand for 30 minutes before baking.
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