num_pages: 344
description: While a luscious layer cake may exemplify the towering glory of southern baking like everything about the American South baking is far more complicated than it seems. Rebecca Sharpless here weaves a brilliant chronicle vast in perspective and entertaining in detail revealing how three global food traditionsIndigenous American European and Africancollided with and merged in the economies cultures and foodways of the South to create what we know as the southern baking tradition.Recognizing that sentiments around southern baking run deep Sharpless takes delight in deflating stereotypes as she delves into the surprising realities underlying the creation and consumption of baked goods. People who controlled the food supply in the South used baking to reinforce their power and make social distinctions. Who used white cornmeal and who used yellow who put sugar in their cornbread and who did not have traditional meanings for southerners as did the proportions of flour fat and liquid in biscuits. By the twentieth century however the popularity of convenience foods and mixes exploded in the region as it did nationwide. Still while some regional distinctions have waned baking in the South continues to be a remarkable and remarkably tasty source of identity and entrepreneurship.Rebecca Sharpless is a professor of history at Texas Christian University. Her most recent book is Cooking in Other Womens Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South 18651960.
language: None
title: Grain and Fire: A History of Baking in the American South
publisher: University of North Carolina Press