It really depends on your need and situation.
The CornishX or Cornish Cross is cheap, readily available, and commercially valued as having a very high white/meat to dark meat ratio and the best feed conversion rate in the industry. That said, you can't raise your own - you will have to buy more birds every time you need them (not a big problem, they are readily available through just about everyone and everywhere, most of the year). Also, you will have to feed them, they don't free range well, they sure don't put weight on fast free ranging, and they aren't predator aware (or particularly fast trying to escape predators).
Understand too, this will come out of your entertainment budget - due to economies of scale, you will never get close to the cost of a supermarket chicken.
Now, if you want something you can hatch replacements of (which means you are also likely investing in an incubator, and maintaining a separate area in which to keep the babies till they get some size on them - or building a larger hen house you can partition with them in mind), you can look to a dual purpose breed whose eggs you can hatch for replacement meat birds, cull the males, and keep the hens for egg laying. Sounds great, BUT!
Dual purpose birds don't grow nearly as fast as CornishX, meaning more time per weight. Nor are they as feed efficient, meaning more feed per eventual weight. You can cut feed costs some by allowing them to range your property (if you have it, and if its growing the right greens - your perfectly manicured yard ain't it - and they will destroy it, besides!), but now your birds are more active, which further slows weight gain and tends to toughen the meat, since those muscles are getting used. Also, there is a lower ratio of light meat to dark meat in every DP bird I'm aware of, when compared to the CornishX.
I don't say these things to dissuade you, just to make you aware of the reality of the situation.
and finally, as a fellow Flor-idiot, I see
you live in Polk County. Home of Lakeland and Winter Park. Off the top of my head, I believe your chicken keeping ordinances are relatively restrictive (not like Palm Beach restrictive, but not as permissive as, say, Alachua or rural Ocala). Check your zoning - you may be facing limits of just a few birds, no roosters allowed. If that's the case, you can't grow your own, and will have to order/buy replacement birds, plus have a freezer to store your culled. With that small a number of birds, its likely not cost efficient (due to shipping charges) to buy direct from a hatchery, meaning you can only obtain replacements during your local TSC's "chick days", by buying small number from local breeders (for good or ill), or by grouping up with neighbors and splitting a bulk order. Those are all logistical issues you want to explore before you start.
You are asking the right questions - or starting to - but the right answers will be heavily dependent on your individual situation.
