Give mountain folks their druthers when it comes to breads and most of them will speak right up for cornbread. But it has got to be the unadulterated, old fashioned baked-in-a-black-iron-skillet kind. None of this fancied up, sugar sweetened Yankee stuff. And it has got to be made, naturally, out of water ground corn meal. This is the kind that is coarse ground, sifted, through a sieve only when it comes time to make up a batter for baking. Another thing, as any old timer will tell you, don’t let anybody try to put off a turn of yellow corn meal on you with the claim that it makes just as good corn bread as white corn. It doesn’t …no siree, not by a long shot.
Once upon a time here in the hills almost every particle of breadstuff was made of corn meal. Folks ate it three times a days and never got tired of it. Perhaps one of its attractions, then as now, lay in its infinite variety.
Since the colonists first discovered corn bread baked in ashes back around 1608, folks have been discovering that it is the staff of life and that there’s more ways of fixing it than there are kernels on an ear of corn. When we think of corn bread nowadays we think of the baked in a skillet kind. But the term covers a heap of kinds, from the hoecake of Civil War times up to the melting softness of spoonbread. As a matter of fact, cornbreads include ash cakes, johnnycake, cracklin’ bread, corn muffins, corn sticks, spoonbread, mush bread, egg bread, corn dodgers, batter cakes, corn pone and corn light bread.
First of the corn breads was ash cakes. Corn meal batter was rolled into small portions and baked in the hot ashes in a campfire or on the hearth. Sometimes such cakes were placed on a clean board in front of the fire and cooked. This was called johnnycake. And sometimes a hoe was used instead of a board, the batter being spread on the blade and leaned toward the fire and the product was known as hoe cake.
Corn light bread is something to make your mouth water. It is made with yeast and molasses. It must be made the night before so it will rise overnight and be ready for baking the next day. Molasses is put into the batter and beat until there is not a single bubble left in the mixture. Corn light bread is made in loaves, like storebought bread. When it comes from the oven and sliced it resembles brown bread or a dark gingerbread. It is coarse like brown bread but not as soggy, nor quite as sweet. It is easy to keep, and when cold and sliced thinly, toasted with melted butter…well there is nothing quite like it!
This is cornbread country – unsweetened and cooked in an iron skillet.