The other day, someone texted me with a rather serious subject: sugar in cornbread.
That’s right—clutch your pearls, fan yourself with your lace handkerchiefs, pull out the fainting couch. I’m about to touch a nerve with some of my more penitent southern cooks when I say: I see no problem with sugar in cornbread.
Now, hear me out, there’s a reason for that. Albeit, a rather complicated one, but I hope I can plead my case for sugar in modern cornbread. That’s right, modern cornbread, because this whole debate over sugar in cornbread really came into the fore after the Great Depression. Why? Well, let me tell you a story.
My mother’s family largely hails from southern Marengo County, with one of our many hometowns being Dixons Mill. You can find pictures of the old mill, but I hate to tell you that the mill itself was gone long before any of you reading this now were probably even born.
Nonetheless, the town gets its name from the water-powered stone mill that kept farmers from miles around supplied with something we can’t get so easily nowadays: stoneground cornmeal. Ever since families migrated from the Carolinas and Georgia into these prairie lands, cornmeal was not only preferred, but essential. Our sub-tropic climate was quite inhospitable to storing wheat flours outside of winter, making cornmeal the starch that holds the southern table together most of the year.
Now farmers, like my kinfolk, would take their harvests of field-ripened corn to the mill to get processed. Usually, this was a barter system—three bags in, three bags out.
Now, the keyword there is “field-ripened corn.” What is that, exactly?
Well, back before monocultures turned our oranges into glorified sponges and apples into edible cardboard, there were quite a variety of heirloom and heritage crops. One such variety of corn was dent corn, so called for the dent that was in the middle of each kernel.
Farmers would leave their corn to dry out in the field before harvesting. One, this was out of necessity to make processing the corn into meal easier for all involved. Two, it allowed the corn to concentrate in both flavor and sweetness, yielding a much more flavorful meal than what we would come to know after the turn of the century.
By then, roll milling came to town and offered a much more economical option for families looking to stretch their crops to the fullest. However, roll milling, which is how most cornmeal is processed now, crushed the grain finer than stoneground varieties. Thus, you lose a lot of the flavor and texture that was present in cornbread for generations.
By the time our boys here were getting ready to go off to World War II, the cornmeal their forefathers grew up with was becoming a thing of the past—a luxury, even. Family recipes that relied on a simple cornbread, much like the corn pone it originated from, had to be gussied up to compensate for the rather bland and mushy texture this modern cornbread produced.
Another problem arose when corn producers were sending off green corn to the mills, where air would be forced into the kernels to accelerate drying and processing the cornmeal. As such, you end up with a cornmeal that is widely available and wholly lackluster.
Now, you may be wondering, why do I even care about all of this?
Well, for one thing, it was bothering me all this posturing in southern cookbooks about sugar in cornbread being a Yankee thing. To me, that’s just fiddle-faddle. Don’t tell me we were knee deep in sugar cane back then and never thought once what it might taste like in cornbread.
If you wanna get smart with me and call it cake, you can take that nonsense somewhere else, because I’m here to tell you that the cornmeal we get off the shelf now needs something to revive it.
Now, we do have such brands as Bob’s Red Mill that give us a heirloom experience, but this is a very recent addition to store shelves compared to the Martha Whites of the world. When we were in North Carolina for Thanksgiving last year, John and I bought two bags of stone ground cornmeal from a hardware store, because I’d never even seen a bag of stoneground cornmeal. It was one of those moments where I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.
I’ve heard tell of folks sourcing the best stoneground cornmeal and the best, thickest buttermilk to make two ingredient cornbread. I’ve tried many times to make hot water cornbread and always end up viewing it as nothing more than baked mush.
You see, sugar adds structure, but it also keeps in moisture. So many of these cornmeals now taste so flavorless that, in my opinion, you can’t afford all the ‘us vs. them’ posturing.
Sure, you can wag your finger at me and say that I should be using stoneground cornmeal every time, but try telling me that when I’m at the Piggly Wiggly trying to find a suitable option for my ritual of peas and greens. I’ll tell you, try making some proper hot water cornbread with store-bought meal and tell me that it isn’t mush with a crust.
I ain’t wiring this column to be a five-star chef, I’m here to represent the culinary traditions I grew up with and have been watching disappear.
We always had sweet cornbread in my family, especially with barbecue. In fact, a spread of barbecue pork with all the fixings is really where sweet cornbread shines the brightest, in my humble opinion.
Turn up your nose all you want, but here I’ll share with y’all a recipe that may challenge your sensibilities, but I’m hoping that once you spot the name for whom this recipe belongs to, you’ll think twice before you start invoking the Yankee theory.
Molasses Cornbread for Zora Neale Hurston
Vegetable oil for greasing the pan
2 cups coarsely ground yellow cornmeal
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup warm water
1 Tablespoon baking soda
2 cups buttermilk
1 cup molasses
Heat the oven to 350 degrees with a rack in the middle.
Brush a 9×13-inch baking pan with vegetable oil.
Whisk together the cornmeal, flour, and salt in a large bowl. Pour the warm water into a small bowl or cup and stir in the baking soda to dissolve. Add to the cornmeal mixture, along with the buttermilk and molasses, stirring until just incorporated.
Pour the batter into the pan and bake until the edges are crisp and the center is firm when gently pressed, about 33 to 37 minutes. Cut into squares and serve. Serves 8 to 12.
Zora Neale Hurston was born in 1891, and you know what? She grew up with this very cornbread. This variation was enjoyed in the wintertime when hog killings were kicking up so the land acted as a natural refrigerator.
Sure, this is more like poundcake, but you’d be surprised how well it pairs with savory dishes. I made this last year for thanksgiving ahead of time, and let’s just say it’s better off fresh. Nevertheless, I wish I’d held out for the stoneground yellow cornmeal, because it would have definitely changed the profile of this.
That’s a whole other debate—white vs. yellow cornmeal.
Most Southerners acknowledge that white cornmeal was the dominant strain, and it wasn’t until industrialization took over that yellow cornmeal became more ubiquitous in the South.
Just like we discussed earlier, wheat flour was also quite a rarity. Thus, it was rarely included in cornbread itself, which usually remained purely cornmeal with very little additions.
The reason why you use hot or warm water is that it activates the cornmeal, so to speak. The hot water reacts with the meal to where it takes on a certain leavening property.
Plus, molasses is a Southern staple in its own right. Although, I’ve wondered what this might taste like with sorghum syrup, or even just pure cane syrup.
Also, if you are wondering what to look for with whole wheat flour, it often is just labeled Bread Flour. And if you’re an honest-to-goodness Southerner, you might be better off getting a small bag, as they hardly get any traction in my kitchen.
Anyhow, I could have shared Minnie Pearl’s Corn Light Bread, which is very similar to the Carolyn Nelson cornbread I shared a few weeks back, but you can find it yourself. Just be sure to say a “How-DEE” for me.
Besides, we can’t afford for me to start waxing poetic about my Saturday nights spent watching Hee-Haw.
When I first read Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God it was in college for a class called Literature of the Great Depression. As you might imagine, it was a very cheerful course.
My jaw just about dropped, though, when someone asked what a tea cake was and, by show of hands, only a handful of us had ever consumed a tea cake. To me, that’s tantamount to blasphemy.
Yet, that wouldn’t make me any better than the folks calling sugared cornbread a Yankee thing.
So, as I watch the hummingbirds sip on my cosmos, I’ll leave you with this.
Even if it’s just a tablespoon of sugar, like in Jimmy Carter’s cornbread, there’s a place for sugar in your cornbread these days.
Maybe it’s just my sweet tooth, or my partiality for a box of Jiffy mix, but you just can’t argue that the salt-of-the-earth folks still running these prairies have to go out of their way to make cornbread the “right” way.
Folks act like sugar doesn’t make it into savory things all the time. You mean to tell me I can sugar my caramelized onions, but not my cornbread? There’s people who sugar their collards, even. Though, I wouldn’t go that far.
So, if you’re still a skeptic, I urge you to try even a pinch in your next pan of this very Southern delicacy. Even if you don’t, at least I can rest easy knowing I pleaded my case.
