In this video, join Southern Living's Sid Evans as he chats with Anne Byrn, the Nashville-born author behind the bestselling 'Cake Mix Doctor' series. Anne shares plenty of insights from her latest cookbook, 'Baking in the American South: 200 Recipes and Their Untold Stories,' her most ambitious work yet. Plus, discover her favorite recipes, solve the great Southern debate over cornbread, and see how important cooking lessons from mom can really be.
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00:00Anne Byrne, welcome to Biscuits and Jam.
00:03Thank you. It's great to be here, Sid.
00:05You are definitely in the right place talking about biscuits, and we are going to talk about biscuits.
00:12I look forward to it.
00:15Anne, where am I reaching you right now?
00:17Right now I'm in Tennessee, my home, Middle Tennessee, and I'm actually up at Mont Eagle Assembly with my family for the week.
00:25Oh, that's great. Do you spend a lot of time up there?
00:27We spend about one week a year up here, you know, and we've done it.
00:32We figured out over the last 30 years, you know, we've tried to come up here in some fashion, you know, maybe if not for the whole week for a couple of days.
00:43And my kids went to Swanee, and my husband went to Swanee, so everybody looks at it as this great homecoming, you know, and I'm the outlier, but I love it.
00:54I love the weather, and I love the people up here. It's been great.
00:58Oh, that's great. I love that place and that area. I've got a lot of friends who went to Swanee.
01:05My daughter's even looking at Swanee.
01:08Oh, excellent.
01:09Yeah, it's a really special place.
01:12It is.
01:13It is.
01:13I appreciate you cutting into your vacation time to make time for this.
01:19Happy to do it.
01:20Happy to do it.
01:21Well, I just want to say, first of all, congrats on the new cookbook.
01:27It is so great.
01:29It's called Baking in the American South.
01:32And I've got to say, Anne, it's one of the best cookbooks that I've come across in a long time.
01:38It is so well done.
01:40It's so interesting.
01:42And I just, you know, I was kind of surprised that it is possible that there are so many new discoveries that you can make about baking in the South in 2024.
01:54That's an interesting thought.
01:56Yeah.
01:56And I think I didn't really know what I was going to find when I jumped into this project, really.
02:02Perhaps we've all kind of shared the same recipes over the years, you know.
02:08And so there was the journalist in me was knew that I was going to be on a hunt for some obscure recipes and some hyper regional kind of recipes that, you know, we didn't talk about.
02:21Like cantaloupe cream pie and tomato chocolate sheet cake, you know, from Arkansas.
02:28I mean, they're out there for sure.
02:30And they've won recipe contests, you know, maybe in the local neighborhood.
02:37Or they're a recipe that's made in the school cafeteria, you know, in the 1970s.
02:42They're definitely out there.
02:43They just haven't been repeated very often.
02:46And they kind of had their moment in the sun maybe, but they've kind of faded from memory.
02:53And it's nice to bring them back and reintroduce them to folks.
02:58Yeah, I think so.
02:58And they also, you know, when I selected recipes to go in the book, I really wanted them.
03:04It had to be a fabulous recipe because, number one, this is a baking book.
03:08So, you know, this is a book for people who want to read about Southern culture and are interested in history and our region.
03:16But it's also for people who don't even live in the South who just want fabulous biscuit recipes or they want to know how to make really great cornbread.
03:24But it's a book for bakers.
03:25And I go into, you know, all the protein counts of all the various flours and why Southern flour was different and whatever.
03:31So the recipes had to really work.
03:34And that, you know, so that threw out some of the quirky recipes.
03:37But some remained, you know, and those were the ones that I kind of grabbed onto.
03:42Well, I'm curious about the origins of this book.
03:44You talk about this a little bit in the introduction.
03:47But take me back to the bookstore in North Carolina where you kind of realized that this was a book that needed to be written.
03:59Or it seems like that was where you kind of got the seed of the idea.
04:03Definitely.
04:03That was the fall of 21.
04:05I actually had already been given the opportunity to write the book on Southern baking.
04:10So I knew that I could do it.
04:13And I was just mulling how I was going to write this book.
04:17And I was on book tour with another book, which is always the best way for authors to get material for the next one, you know, traveling.
04:26Get out of your house.
04:27And so I was in Pinehurst, North Carolina, a lovely bookshop called The Country Bookshop, I believe.
04:33And, yeah, and so it was just a talk.
04:35And someone said, well, you know, what's your next project?
04:38And I said, well, I'm actually working on this book about Southern baking, you know.
04:42And one woman just immediately, her hand shot up, you know, and she said, well, what is so special about Southern baking?
04:48And she did divulge.
04:49She was from Ohio, you know, so she was a little outside the region.
04:52And I got immediately on the defensive and I didn't like it, you know.
04:58And I just kind of was like, well, it's really good, you know.
05:01And but I had to I had to come up with some concrete answers.
05:04And then I felt like the audience, the rest of the audience was kind of on my team.
05:09I mean, they could sense that I was uncomfortable and their hands shot up.
05:13And then it was like, well, it's the biscuits, it's the flour, it's your mother's recipes and on and on.
05:18And here this lovely discussion kind of came out of it.
05:22And I do believe I do believe our friend from Ohio did kind of walk away thinking, wow, they're really passionate about the way they bake in the South.
05:33And that was what stuck with me, how people were so on board.
05:40And so when I drove home through North Carolina, through the mountains, beautiful mountains, Tennessee mountains, Smokies, and I'm on I-40 heading into Nashville.
05:50I said, you know, this book has got to be written about the people of the South.
05:56And I don't know their stories.
05:58You know, I know my story and I don't think it's as interesting as somebody else's story.
06:03So I've got to go and I've got to find out the stories from the mountains in North Carolina and East Texas and down in the Delta.
06:11And that's what really kind of changed how I was going to approach this book and tackle it.
06:18I mean, you didn't really have to answer the question.
06:20It's like the audience answered it for you.
06:21And they were they were they were fired up when they heard somebody kind of challenging.
06:28They did.
06:28What's so special?
06:30Very much so.
06:31I mean, it's the same that you've probably gotten into and, you know, and in the cornbread wars, you know, and people.
06:37Yeah.
06:38And and and why people are so passionate about recipes.
06:41And I believe that because it crosses the line.
06:44It's not just cornbread.
06:45It's not just biscuit.
06:46It's it's their family story.
06:48And it's a family culture.
06:49And it's just it means a lot to them.
06:51Yeah.
06:52Yeah.
06:52Well, I want to come back to the book in a second.
06:54And I want to come back to some specific recipes.
06:57But tell me a little bit about you and and about Nashville.
07:03You're from Nashville, born and raised, right?
07:06Right.
07:06I was born and raised in Nashville.
07:08I went away to college to the University of Georgia in Athens as a bulldog.
07:12I went there because of the journalism school.
07:15I was the nerdy, you know, editor of my high school newspaper every summer and Christmas vacation in college.
07:24I would go home to Nashville and was an intern at the Nashville Banner, which was the afternoon paper in the new.
07:32I was the only reporter in the newsroom on the Sunday in August when Elvis died in Memphis.
07:39So I I was sent out on that story because of that story.
07:45One day I exempted one or two journalism courses at Georgia.
07:50I mean, it was crazy.
07:51But I have always written all my life written.
07:54And when I graduated from Georgia, I was offered a job at the Atlanta Journal, which was the afternoon paper.
08:02And so they wanted a new food writer.
08:04And so I got the food writing job, although I had no experience writing about food.
08:09I just knew how to write for newspapers and how to gather news.
08:15And it was quite an education.
08:17So I was in Atlanta for 15 years from 78 to 93.
08:21So I was there when Atlanta was changing.
08:24I mean, when Hartsville Airport was exploding, when all the international airlines were coming in, Sabina Airline.
08:31And all those professional chefs were brought in, you know, to bring the Belgian cuisine, French cuisine, whatever.
08:38I mean, I was there when, you know, Nikolai's Roof was the place in town.
08:43So I think that I kind of grew up in food at a time when Atlanta was exploding.
08:50And at the same time, that's when all the cooking schools in Atlanta were really big.
08:54I mean, Rich's Department Store was still in downtown Atlanta.
08:58Natalie Dupree was at the helm.
09:00You know, she brought in Julia Child, Marcella Hazan.
09:04Every time there was an empty seat at the cooking school, you know, she got on the phone.
09:08She called me and said, you know, I've got a place for you.
09:11So I began to get educated in cooking and just organically.
09:17And then I really and then they wanted me, the paper wanted me to start reviewing restaurants, which may be really uncomfortable.
09:22I said, you know, I have no professional experience to do this, you know.
09:27And so they gave me a leave of absence and I went to Paris and studied at La Veren and for about three months came back, reviewed restaurants.
09:39And yeah, that was that.
09:41That was Atlanta.
09:42I married an old sweetheart, moved to England, lived for about a year.
09:47And then he was transferred to, of all places, Nashville.
09:52Back to Nashville.
09:54So I made this little loop.
09:56At the time, it was great because we were able to raise our kids there.
09:59My parents were getting older.
10:01I mean, it was really, it was meant to be.
10:03It was a great coming home for me.
10:06So I have spent the last 30 some odd years in Nashville.
10:09And that's where, you know, I started writing part time for the Tennessean once I had child number two.
10:16Just I wanted to keep my hands in writing.
10:19And then I wrote that piece, which was how you can take a box of cake mix and throw in all these ingredients, you know, that are really at your disposal.
10:28And make fabulous cakes like your mother did in the 1970s.
10:32And that was the genesis for The Cake Makes Doctor, which became, you know, a New York Times bestseller.
10:40It was crazy, crazy a few years.
10:44I had young children and I was constantly on book tour.
10:47I was on QVC.
10:49And yet at the core, I was just, I'm just a journalist, you know.
10:53I'm just a writer who finds everybody else's stories really interesting.
11:00And that's me.
11:02Well, you covered a lot of territory there.
11:05My gosh.
11:06And you've covered a lot of territory in general, just all the traveling.
11:09And I think, you know, that's really something to be able to go to Europe, to go to France, to go to England, to spend all that time in Atlanta and then come home.
11:21It gives you a very different perspective on the world.
11:24Definitely.
11:25Well, I want to go back to your core for a second and tell me a little bit about the kitchen where you grew up.
11:31Who was doing the cooking and what was on the table?
11:35Because all this interest in food had to come from somewhere.
11:40I've heard you mention your mother, your grandmother, your aunt.
11:47What comes to mind when you think about that kitchen?
11:50What was the thing that really sparked the interest for you?
11:54Well, the food always tasted really good.
11:56And my mother was never, she was the fifth of five girls.
12:02And so she was never, you know, she never learned how to cook.
12:05And so she was self-taught, highly creative.
12:08She arranged flowers.
12:09She had flowers in our drying and I think it was borax or whatever, some sort of substance in these boxes in our attic, you know.
12:18And she was, yeah, and my mother, she was carving watermelons into baskets.
12:23And she was really artistic and just expressed it through food.
12:27And so when she had family over, we had a lot of, because she was one of five, we had a lot of cousins in Nashville.
12:34And she always had people over.
12:35She was the best cook of all of them.
12:37And so we, there was always just a lot of food.
12:40She always thought that you needed to have plenty.
12:42And that was kind of embedded in the way that I cooked.
12:46And so I think as a, coming home from, as a college student, you first come in through the basement, you kind of go in the basement door.
12:53There was a utility kind of laundry room down there.
12:56And at the back was an old chest freezer that I think was like 1890s or something.
13:01But it was, it had to be defrosted every year.
13:03But it was, you could walk in and look in the chest freezer and you knew what she had been cooking for the last month.
13:10Because she had like creme de menthe parfaits and parfait glasses lined up that maybe were left over from a bridge party.
13:17Or some tenderloin that was left over.
13:19Or beef stroganoff.
13:21And then you would go up the steps and emerge right into the kitchen.
13:25And that was the, you know, 70s.
13:27And nobody gave a lot of thought to where the kitchen was placed in the house, you know.
13:33It was tiny.
13:34And you just entered into, I mean, it was complete chaos because there were always two dogs.
13:40And the telephone was ringing.
13:42And the telephone had a long cord, you know, that would stretch through other rooms.
13:46And my mother was probably at the stove.
13:48I mean, the countertops were Formica, you know, pale, off-white, speckled, sparkles in them.
13:56The cabinets were some sort of wood, thinnish, avocado green, I think, you know, GE of built-in ovens.
14:06And it was, you know, it was a very functional kitchen, but not by today's standards.
14:13It wasn't fancy at all.
14:15But she was able to produce great food.
14:17And so that was really the bedrock for everything that I've ever written about food is that, you know, food brings people together.
14:25And it tastes good, you know, and it really nourishes your soul, your belly.
14:32And my mother knew how to do that, and she knew how to make it beautiful.
14:36And I think that that was also something that I have loved is learning how to style food for photography through all the years that I've worked for newspapers.
14:46I had to teach myself.
14:47And then, you know, was on the set for this book and all of the photography.
14:52We had stylists for one week, but then we didn't have a stylist for a week.
14:56It was me.
14:57So doing all the baking and all that.
14:59And so I think that that kind of sums it up.
15:02I mean, food should bring people together.
15:04It should taste good.
15:06And it should be beautiful.
15:07Would you say that she was a competitive person?
15:12Oh, no.
15:12No.
15:13Her older sister is highly competitive.
15:15No, my mother was the peacemaker.
15:19And even as a mother, she was the peacemaker.
15:22Now, she was competitive at the bridge table.
15:25She won awards, you know.
15:27She would travel throughout and go to bridge tournaments and all and bring back trays and trophies and all.
15:33But in the kitchen, no, she was never.
15:35And she shared recipes with people.
15:37And people shared recipes with her, too.
15:39Well, I ask that because, you know, baking in particular can be a pretty competitive sport.
15:46And especially around the holiday time.
15:49Yes.
15:49When you've got lots of different people, you know, bringing things over and whose dessert is going to be the one that is getting talked about the most.
15:57Yeah, no, that's a really good point, Sid.
16:01And you're right.
16:02And that definitely came out in this book.
16:03And I think especially when it comes to layer cakes, there must be something about layer cakes that, you know, makes one competitive.
16:10Maybe because it does require a certain skill, not only to bake the layers that are perfectly even and stack them up and get them frosted beautifully and then get them transported to wherever everybody's going to, you know, slice into them.
16:25So there's a lot of work involved.
16:27So I think, you know, I think they earned it.
16:31You know, they can be competitive about that.
16:32But my mother wasn't, I think, perhaps she knew she was a good cook and she knew that if she brought a dish, people would say, oh, that's BB's, you know, that's BB's.
16:43And it was kind of known.
16:45You just need to go ahead and get some.
16:47Yeah.
16:47Before it disappears.
16:49Before it disappears.
16:50Yeah.
16:51So was there a particular dessert that she made, something that she baked that kind of stands out to you?
16:59She did.
17:00She was not a layer cake lady at all.
17:02You know, so she was, I think, probably her chest squares, the recipe that's in the book.
17:07She liked quick and easy Coca-Cola cake.
17:10She baked things in a pan, you know, put the lid on, put the, you know, cover it up and take it with you kind of thing.
17:16She was real practical.
17:21Well, I love the name BB, too.
17:23Yeah, BB.
17:23Well, that was given to her by our sisters.
17:25That's when you're the last, when you're the fifth.
17:27Yeah.
17:29The baby.
17:30The baby.
17:30Well, I want to talk about Atlanta just for a second.
17:33You know, you mentioned that before.
17:35You spent a lot of years in Atlanta at a really interesting time in its history.
17:42When you think about the food in that city and everything that was happening, what's an example of a discovery that you made when you were reporting on food in Atlanta, whether it was a new chef or a restaurant or something really exciting that was happening in the food world?
18:01There was so much technique.
18:03There was so much classical cooking in Atlanta that kind of blew me away.
18:07I mean, Atlanta had so much going on.
18:11It had meat and threes and it had a way of eating and cooking and bringing people together through the churches in southwest Atlanta that I had not seen before growing up in my, you know, in my part of Nashville.
18:25So that was just mind-blowing to me.
18:28I remember going to the Braves games at the old Fulton County Stadium, I guess it was, before it was Turner Field.
18:35You know, and if you wanted something to eat before the game, you know, there were all kinds of residents would come down and pull barbecue grills down and we'd be cooking ribs and have loaves of white bread.
18:47It was the best barbecue rib sandwich you've ever had in your life.
18:50So Atlanta, when we were reporters from the newspaper, we would leave and go to meat and threes, you know, within, you know, two, three blocks away off of Marietta Street.
19:01I mean, that was that kind of cooking vegetables and ribs and frying chicken.
19:06It was the first place I'd ever had, like, Jamaican, like, chicken and waffles, you know.
19:11I think just to be able to go and have that.
19:14Now, at the same time, it was in the 80s, we had all of that sort of Kay Goldstein, proof of the pudding influence came into Atlanta.
19:22I mean, she brought fine cooking, like a silver palette kind of style of cooking and catering to Atlanta.
19:31So, you know, you went to proof of the pudding for chocolate mousse and for, you know, fresh baked croissants.
19:38I mean, she brought a style of French cooking, but an elevated, beautiful style of cooking and baking and presenting food to Atlanta.
19:49And then you had, yeah, you had the restaurant world.
19:51I mean, it was crazy with all of the European chefs, the souffles.
19:55Yeah, I keep saying Nicolas Roup, the Grand Marnier souffle.
19:58I mean, I'll never forget it.
20:00And then you had Natalie Dupree.
20:02You had the cooking teachers, Diane Wilkinson, Natalie Dupree.
20:05And what they offered just to Atlantans who wanted to take classes.
20:10I mean, you learned, and many, Virginia Willis, Rebecca Lang.
20:14I mean, they all learned through Natalie, classical French cooking.
20:18So it was an insanely busy food time with a lot of different factions going on.
20:26And some real trailblazers kind of leading the way.
20:30And some, you know, new thinking about Southern food and what it could be.
20:36Very much so.
20:37Very much so.
20:38And Kay Goldstein and I, who lives in North Carolina now, and we still talk.
20:43And one of her recipes, her brownie, the family brownie recipe is in the book.
20:48But yeah, she was a trailblazer for sure.
20:51I mean, she's saying you don't need to bake your brownies all the way through.
20:54They're good when they're just a little gooey right in the middle, you know.
20:57And you don't need to use Hershey's cocoa.
21:00There's better cocoa out there.
21:02Or you can use Scharfenberger chocolate, you know, and melt that down.
21:06So I think she was just like blowing everybody's mind by the ingredients.
21:11And interestingly, at the same time, in the national news, we were covering a lot of like
21:17health and nutrition in the 1970s and 80s.
21:20I think that that was kind of counter to everything that was going on in Atlanta.
21:23Nobody was interested in health and nutrition at that time.
21:26It was, we were, you know, it was all about really a lot of entertaining and new recipes,
21:35new flavors.
21:37And at the same time, Sid, I mean, what was going on in California would greatly influence
21:41Atlanta, which was, you know, the rise in California cooking, regional cooking, farm to
21:45table, and all of that.
21:47So that was influenced Atlanta.
21:49And, you know, at the same time, I was a newspaper reporter.
21:52And I had to report on average people.
21:56What did, what did regular old people eat?
21:58So that sent me out into kitchens all across the state of Georgia, where people were, you
22:03know, growing, I mean, putting up fig preserves, because they grew fig trees as tall as their
22:08house, you know, and, and peach preserves.
22:10And that style of preservation is a really big, and I saw that in writing this book, how putting
22:19food away in some form has been a big part of Southern baking and cooking too.
22:25Yeah.
22:25Wow.
22:25What an interesting time to be there.
22:28And, and probably a whole lot more interesting, not to knock Nashville, but in terms of a food
22:34scene, and in terms of, you know, really interesting things happening, Atlanta, by far, was just a
22:41very different place.
22:42It was a Southern city that was exploding.
22:45Yes.
22:45And people were drawn to it, and the airport brought a lot of folks to town.
22:50Yeah, definitely.
22:51Yeah.
22:52All right.
22:52Well, let's talk about baking in the American South.
22:54Okay.
22:55So your first chapter is about cornbread.
22:59Uh, there's a lot of debate about cornbread, and there are infinite ways to make it, and
23:08you show a lot of them, uh, in the book.
23:12Uh, and it's just, it's fascinating reading about it, but talk to me about that.
23:17Like, why did you want to start with cornbread?
23:20Why is that the natural place to start?
23:22On that drive home from Tennessee, when I started writing this book, and then when I researched
23:27at interviewing people, I found that it was the people and the land were the two greatest
23:31factors influencing and affecting Southern baking.
23:35It was the people who were baking, people who came into the South and migrated here,
23:38and the land, what they had to work with.
23:41And what food, what baked good really represents people and the land better than cornbread?
23:48I mean, and I think what a lot of people don't know about the South is it was mostly rural,
23:53has been mostly rural.
23:54A lot of people in the South didn't get electricity until the 1950s.
23:59Um, so, you know, Southern baking, you may think that it's about those layer cakes, but
24:05the most baked baked good in the South is going to be cornbread, because corn was everywhere.
24:10You could grow corn in any of the states in the South, and people could put a patch of
24:16corn, you know, in the backyard.
24:18You had cornbread, and the mills brought towns together, and the mills where the corn was
24:23ground into cornmeal.
24:25It was just very accessible.
24:27And cornbread fed people.
24:29It filled people up, you know?
24:31You made it with molasses, and it sweetened it, you know?
24:34It filled bellies.
24:36It just sustained people.
24:39And to me, it embodies Southern baking more than anything.
24:44I mean, there's nothing simpler in a lot of ways, you know, compared to like these layer
24:51cakes and all the other kinds of recipes you have in here.
24:54But nonetheless, there are a million different ways to make it, and everybody's very opinionated
24:58about their way.
25:00I love it.
25:00And so maybe I channeled a bit of my mother, you know, there, because I believe, I think
25:06everybody's way is fascinating, you know?
25:09And I think it's fascinating that some states are, you know, team white cornmeal, you know?
25:15And others are team yellow.
25:18And, you know, sugar, no sugar.
25:20I mean, my husband's aunt's husband, at his funeral in Chattanooga, in the eulogy, his
25:31son got up to eulogize his father.
25:34And the story he told was about cornbread, and how his cornbread, and how his father would
25:39never, ever let sugar get into the family cornbread, and wouldn't even let them put, you know,
25:45strawberry jam on their cornbread.
25:47I mean, that is a powerful thing, and that really happens all over the South.
25:54And I love that part of it.
25:56And so I'd tell those stories.
25:58And then back to the kitchen, cornbread performs differently depending on what kind of cornmeal
26:05you use, if it's coarsely ground versus finely ground.
26:10I mean, you're going to heat the skillet ahead of time.
26:13It's going to get sizzling hot.
26:14You pour in the batter.
26:15You're going to have a better crust.
26:18I mean, there's so many nuances to cornbread that I think we don't think about.
26:22And that's all in that chapter.
26:25What is your favorite cornbread recipe, or the one that you kind of personally go to the
26:30most?
26:30The Shelby Foote's Mississippi Cornbread recipe in the book, which is white cornmeal, no sugar.
26:37Actually, it does contain one tablespoon of sugar.
26:40And he does that.
26:43He did that because he felt like that tablespoon of sugar helped the cornmeal taste a bit fresher
26:50and more of sweet corn, which I think is an interesting, you know, and I've tried it
26:55both ways, and I like it.
26:56It goes into a skillet with either butter or bacon fat, you know, left drippings from cooking
27:02bacon, but that to me is like the cornbread that I was raised on in Middle Tennessee.
27:08And that's my cornbread.
27:10I like a dense cornbread, a lot of crust, big pan, 12-inch skillet, a lot of crust.
27:18What about you?
27:18I guess I like a lot of crust too.
27:21And usually I'm trying to sop something up with it.
27:26And so it's got to be sturdy enough that it'll hold up to whatever I'm dipping it in.
27:34And, you know, I don't want a cornbread that's going to kind of crumble and fall apart.
27:39Yeah.
27:39So I don't know.
27:41That's a priority for me.
27:42So less cakey.
27:44So no flour.
27:46Less cakey.
27:46Yes.
27:47I agree.
27:48Yeah, I like a dense cornbread.
27:49I do love Kevin Gillespie's recipe that's in this book, for his little wedges, because they use a finely milled cornmeal, you know, from Alabama, J.T. Pollard.
28:00And I think that that, you get the super crispy edges, preheating those wedge pans from Lodge.
28:07And then if you use a finely milled cornbread, cornmeal, it's creamy inside.
28:12It's almost pudding-like inside.
28:16It's really lovely.
28:17I love it.
28:17You've got to try them all, and you've got to have an open mind, right?
28:20I think so.
28:21And that's a big part of it, too.
28:23Yeah.
28:23So, Anne, you acknowledge early on in the book that baking is complicated in the South.
28:31You know, so many of the recipes that we love in this part of the world came from people who were enslaved.
28:37That's right.
28:38So, I'm wondering if this book changed the way that you think about baking and its origins or expanded your understanding through all the research that you did.
28:55It humbled me, I will say, because, yes, it did change the way I look at things.
29:02I realized that the baked goods that I was raised on and were largely baked by other people, maybe the people who baked them weren't as happy about baking them as I was about eating them.
29:16So, that changed me.
29:18And I think when I began to understand that the South has been known for these meringue pies and these complicated desserts and caramel cake and all that may have been baked by someone who was enslaved or underpaid, who had to go home.
29:35Who was not cooking in their own kitchen, who had to go home and cook for her own family and had been standing on her feet all day.
29:46That humbled me.
29:48And I did look at Southern baking differently.
29:50But the only thing I could do about it was to write about it and to explain and hopefully open other people's minds, other people who've been raised in the South who hadn't thought about baking in this way.
30:03You know, and just that, because food is an incredible connector, you know, and recipes are beautiful, they form beautiful memories.
30:14But I do think it's important for us to acknowledge that that came at a price, you know, and that sugar was available to the South.
30:25And why are Southern desserts so sweet?
30:27Well, because we had sugar was available.
30:29Everybody had access to sugar or grew some sugarcane, you know, or had sorghum.
30:34But that came at a price because of the enslaved who worked in the sugarcane plantations and the obscene amount of money that was made by the people who owned the sugar plantations.
30:48And the same could be said for rice in the Lowcountry.
30:50You know, the enslaved who came from West Africa who knew how to create the system and build the rice system throughout the state, it was hard physical labor.
31:03They brought us rice croquettes and beautiful kalas and all of that.
31:08But, you know, I wanted to be able to tell their story.
31:11And that's what that is complicated, as you said, because this is a baking book.
31:18Somebody's going to pick up this book and want to follow the recipe.
31:21But at my age and at my place in my career, I can't write a baking book without telling the whole story.
31:29And that's that is what I've done is to tell the whole story.
31:35Well, there are so many stories in here.
31:38And I think you do a beautiful job of finding ones that have not been told, you know, shining a light on some people that have not gotten so much credit or exposure for the things that they created, that they developed.
31:56One of the stories in here was about Zora Neale Hurston, which I thought was great.
32:02There was a wonderful cornbread recipe in there from her, you know, for all of her literary talent.
32:09She was not somebody that, you know, I associated with being a cook.
32:13So I loved coming across that one.
32:15Yeah, I love her story, too.
32:17And, you know, she was someone who the timing of her life was just tragic, you know, with all of her talent.
32:25She was never she was never respected.
32:28She was never lifted up.
32:30She had to go back during the 1930s.
32:32You know, she was a reporter during the the Works Progress WPA, you know, program with the literary program and gathering stories in Florida and went back and it was segregated program.
32:46So she was not allowed to just go anywhere and gather stories from people.
32:53You know, she was very limited in what she could gather.
32:56And then I think, you know, her books, her novels, you know, brought her some fame.
33:01But it was really later.
33:02It was other other writers lifting her up later.
33:05And she she died penniless.
33:07She died penniless.
33:08And she was in an unmarked grave until.
33:12So I think her her story was important to me also because that recipe kind of shows how cornbread and molasses, like I mentioned, feed people.
33:22And it's we can argue about cornbread.
33:27But at the end of the day, that, you know, you're get you're just getting you're getting calories in that recipe.
33:33You're getting sustenance and energy and what you need.
33:37Yeah.
33:37It goes a long way.
33:39Yeah.
33:39She's someone a lot of people don't know about.
33:41And I don't I don't know if everybody knew Zephyr Wright's story either, who was the cook for Linda Johnson, you know, and how and I did not know, you know, how she had to travel to the White House from Texas during segregation.
33:55And her pecan pie recipe, which was his favorite, President Johnson's favorite, you know, is is a lovely, beautiful recipe.
34:05But it's more than a recipe because it tells about her story and it tells about what what was going on in the early 60s in the South and how difficult it was for her and other black cooks to travel throughout the South, even if they were the cook of the president.
34:22You know, it's pretty amazing.
34:24And so I think that that and I didn't go seeking.
34:28I stumbled across those stories, you know, really said, I mean, these stories, they're out there.
34:33They're out there for everybody to tell, you know.
34:36But that story in particular, I mean, she you know, so this was his beloved cook made one of his favorite recipes, traveled with him everywhere, but couldn't travel with him everywhere.
34:49Had to stay in different places.
34:53Different homes of other blacks or hotels that would motels that would take black.
34:59Right.
34:59And actually influenced his thinking on the Civil Rights Act.
35:04That's correct.
35:05Yes.
35:06She influenced she told him these stories and because she knew him personally from Texas, she could tell him about what had happened on the journey.
35:16And that did influence him signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
35:20Absolutely.
35:20Well, and we we can't end this podcast without talking about biscuits for a second.
35:27OK.
35:27It's called Biscuits and Jam.
35:29I've got to ask you about biscuits.
35:31And in particular, you lay out at one point some rules for making biscuits.
35:37And I'm not going to ask you to recite them all.
35:40But I am curious, you know, what are a couple of rules that you kind of stick to, whether it's, you know, a particular flour that you love to use or, you know, are you really dogmatic about the oven oven temperature?
35:57Or, you know, or or what are the rules that that you kind of recommend to cooks when it comes to biscuits?
36:04Don't overwork the dough.
36:07Don't try not.
36:08It's typical at all southern breads.
36:10Don't add too much flour.
36:12You know, it's true in the yeast breads, yeast rolls, you know, same thing.
36:16Work quickly, lightly.
36:17You can make great biscuits with a variety of flours.
36:21You can make them with white lily.
36:22You can make it with gold metal.
36:24I mean, I know I'm just talking sacrilege here.
36:26You know, I could tell you this, but you really can.
36:29If you know the techniques, you can use your favorite flour, but don't use too much of it.
36:34And when you incorporate the fat into your flour, you can use Crisco.
36:39You could use butter.
36:40I think I like butter because it has more flavor.
36:42You can use lard.
36:43Use your hands, you know, use your hands.
36:46I grew up learning to two knives to incorporate, cut to cut the fat into flour for biscuits.
36:52But no, get your hands in there and actually press and smush that fat into the flour and get your hands in it and add enough buttermilk so that it is a wet dough.
37:05And then turn it out onto lightly floured surface.
37:09You can use a rolling pin if you've got to have a flat top, but I just use my hands and fingers.
37:14And, you know, go about, you know, I think half inch is too small.
37:20I like about a three-quarter inch, you know, slab of biscuits.
37:24If you want layers in them, which I know a lot of people like a laminated biscuit, that's where you start doing some pocketbook folds.
37:31So, actually pick up a third of the dough, another third from the outside, and then over the top of that, turn the dough a quarter turn.
37:42Do it again.
37:43Two or three times will get you some good layers in there.
37:47And then, yes, you need a good cutter that's going to cut straight down without jiggling back and forth.
37:54And then put those, and I think the best pan for bacon biscuits is a cast iron skillet.
38:01I really do.
38:02It makes the really nice crispy bottoms.
38:05And I do like biscuits that are baked kind of snuggled up next to each other because it gives you some crispiness on the outtentops, but you get that center biscuit.
38:15Krista Poulos, who is the pastry chef for Ford Fries restaurants throughout the Southeast, she could disclose that she was always,
38:22when her grandmother made biscuits, she wanted to get in there and grab that center biscuit real fast because she liked soft edges on her biscuit.
38:33And so, I think with a cast iron skillet, it gives more opportunity for some crispy and some soft.
38:39And then, yes, high heat.
38:41I mean, 450 to 500.
38:43So, cook them fast.
38:45Fast.
38:46Get them to rise fast.
38:48Yeah.
38:49Wet dough.
38:50Fast.
38:51And that's kind of the basic rules.
38:53And then, from there, you can vary your flours.
38:55You could use a white lamasse, really nice cake flour from Anson Mills.
39:02You could use what you want, a locally milled.
39:05And, you know, that's the thing, too, said about what's happening now in the South in baking.
39:09It is such an exciting time to bake, if you think about it, because especially in Birmingham, where you are,
39:16so many people have put an emphasis, so many bakers have put an emphasis now, again, finally, on the wheat.
39:23You know, what variety of wheat it is.
39:25Is it locally milled?
39:26You know, and then they're baking the flour.
39:28Then they're baking biscuits or bread.
39:30And I think that that is what's happening now.
39:32And I think that's all been a recent resurgence in Southern baking.
39:36And why do you love to bake?
39:38I mean, what is your, you know, on a personal level, what is the satisfaction that you get out of it?
39:45Is it the challenge?
39:47Is it sharing it with other people and seeing their reaction?
39:51What do you love most about it?
39:52I love the science to it, you know, and the figuring out things.
39:56It's kind of like growing tomatoes, you know.
39:58I like the science of it.
40:00It's frustrating as heck.
40:01But, you know, I mean, once you make a few mistakes, the same thing in baking.
40:05I mean, you make a mistake and you learn from it and you do it differently.
40:09And then I think as a writer, I like sharing that knowledge with other people, kind of helping them troubleshoot.
40:15But I do believe it's a creative.
40:17And so sort of back to my mother, I do believe that baking is really creative and that you can kind of get in a zone with baking like you can with painting or any other creative, you know, or music.
40:29You get into a zone with it.
40:31And then that's why people really enjoy doing it.
40:33And they get a lot of satisfaction because people, they get a lot of feedback.
40:38And you get a lot of really positive feedback.
40:40So I used to tell teenagers or preteens, you know, if they're moody and they think everything is terrible with the world, you know, have you ever tried making a cake?
40:50You know, have you ever baked a cake?
40:51I mean, bake a birthday cake for somebody.
40:53Oh, that's a great piece of advice, yeah.
40:55I mean, you get such great feedback and you're given something of yourself.
41:00So all of that.
41:02I love all that.
41:03Well, Ann, I just have one more question.
41:06What does it mean to you to be Southern?
41:09Oh, gosh.
41:10It means everything.
41:12It means that I can be me, you know.
41:14It means that I can talk the way I want to talk.
41:16The accent that kind of went away when I worked in Atlanta, you know, and I worked with people from all over the country.
41:22When I lived in England, you know, and tried to not talk Southern, I can just be me.
41:28I can.
41:29Those little phrases my mother used to say, gumption and one-eye odor and all of those can creep back into the way I talk.
41:37And that's kind of, you know, that's just who I came from.
41:41Yeah.
41:41And I'm proud about being Southern.
41:44And I think that that's what I say in the introduction of this book, you know.
41:47I love the South, you know.
41:50I mean, with all of our flaws, we have a lot.
41:53We have a lot going for us.
41:54We are good people and we are funny people, you know, and we love a good story and we love to get together and eat and bake, you know.
42:03So that's why I love it.
42:06Well, all of that comes through in this book, which is just fantastic.
42:10I cannot recommend it highly enough.
42:13And congrats on the book and good luck on the tour.
42:17I'm sure you're going to be out on the road talking about it and meeting with people.
42:20And Ann Byrne, thanks so much for being on Biscuits and Jam.
42:25Thank you, Sid.
42:26I loved it.