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Episode 51

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Published on:

9th Sep 2024

WELCOME TO OUR KITCHEN: An interview with Anne Byrn, author of BAKING IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH

We love baking. And Mark is from the U. S. South. He grew up on great baking, particularly because his maternal grandmother was a professional baker.

Join us as Bruce talks with the legendary Anne Byrn. You may remember her from those cake-mix doctor cookbooks. She's back with a giant, new cookbook: BAKING IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH. If you'd like a copy, here's a link for it.

We're Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough, the authors of three dozen cookbooks (and counting!), not to mention Bruce's two knitting books, Mark's memoir (available with his own reading of it on Audible), and several books ghost-written for celebrities.

This is our podcast about food and cooking. Thank you for joining us.

Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK:

[00:53] Our one-minute cooking tip: consider soy sauce as an alternative to salt in savory recipes.

[02:48] Bruce's interview with Anne Byrn, author of BAKING IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH.

[22:40] What’s making us happy in food this week: pears from Costco and veal stew.

Transcript
Speaker:

Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein and this is

the podcast cooking with Bruce and Mark

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and I'm Mark Scarborough and together

with Bruce my husband We have written

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36 cookbooks are working on the 37th.

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It's in editorial right now In fact, it's

in the hands of the copy editor for the

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book right now Which means we're heading

very close to layout and design for it.

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We'll tell you about that

Sometime soon on the podcast.

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It's going to be out in june of 2025

And I have to say that we're both

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more excited about this book than

we have been about a lot of books.

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And we got 36 to be excited about.

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So we'll tell you about that on

down the road in the podcast.

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In this episode of our podcast,

we've got, as is always the

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truth, a one minute cooking tip.

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Bruce has an interview with Anne Byrne.

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She is the author of Baking in

the South and will tell you what's

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making us happy in food this week.

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So let's get started.

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Our one minute cooking tip.

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Consider using soy sauce

instead of salt next time you

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think a recipe needs some salt.

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Now, I'm trying to sit, I'm sitting here

thinking, what are the limits to this?

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What is something that I

would never put soy sauce on?

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Okay, like, baking recipes.

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We would never put soy sauce

instead of salt in brownies.

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Or in cookies, cakes, ice cream.

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I'm thinking next time you think you

want to salt your steak, or the next

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time you even want to salt your oven.

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Oatmeal.

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Try a little bit of soy sauce.

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Really?

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Oatmeal?

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Porridge, why not?

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Put a little on your corn on the cob.

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Okay, that one I can buy.

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Yeah.

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Um, I can also say that if you want to add

a little umami flavor to beef, pork, veal,

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if you're eating veal, or even chicken

stews, that consider using soy sauce.

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Instead of salt as the salt agent

adds so much more depth of flavor

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it does especially in brown braises

and brown stews It's a great

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alternative salt consider it.

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Okay before we get to the next

segment of this podcast Let's

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say that we do have a newsletter.

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It comes out once twice a month Maybe once

a month at this point you can find it on

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our website cooking with bruce and mark.

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com or just bruceandmark.

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com You can sign up there as I always tell

you we don't capture your name or your

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email and you can unsubscribe at any time

It's Mostly unrelated to this podcast.

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I think the latest one was all about

passata, the tomato reduction that

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is famed in Italian food and that you

can find at grocery stores and places

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like world market and home goods

across the North American landscape.

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Anyway, you can sign up for

that there on our website and

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become part of that newsletter.

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Now, the next segment of our podcast,

Bruce's interview with Anne Barron.

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You may know her as the cake mix.

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Dr.

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from years ago.

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She made quite a success out of

those books, but she's got a new book

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out, Baking in the American South.

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Today Anne Byrne is with me, the New

York Times bestselling food writer

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and author of the Cake Mix, Dr.

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Books.

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And she has a grand new book out this

week called Baking in the American South,

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200 Recipes and Their Untold Stories.

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Hey, Anne.

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Hey, Bruce.

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Good to talk to you.

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Why do you think stories of

Southern baking are so compelling?

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I think stories are compelling

anytime, really, you know, regardless

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of the subject or the locale.

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But I think particularly in this cookbook,

I wanted, um, the focus is definitely

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baking, if this book is for people who

love to bake, but it's also people who

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are interested in culture, you know, and

maybe they don't understand the South.

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They, maybe they lived in

the South and don't anymore.

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Uh, maybe they've got family in the South.

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And so I think it explains

the South through recipes.

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And it was a fascinating

project to work on.

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What was the process like for you?

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It was all over the place.

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It was like casting a wide, wide net.

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It was about three years of, um, sort

of reaching across the south, 14 states,

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but even looking at those border areas,

say from Texas into Oklahoma or from.

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Arkansas into Oklahoma and Kentucky

into Indiana, because a lot of the

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recipes that we may consider Southern,

you know, they kind of reach into

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the Midwest a little bit, um, or

up, you know, up the Atlantic coast.

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So I think it was reaching

that, going back, really kind

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of studying some specific area.

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Uh, areas of time in the south, civil war,

you know, prohibition, uh, the World War

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I and II years rationing in the south,

um, how rice production came into the

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south, how sugarcane production came

into the south, kind of understanding

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the agriculture and the economy of the

south, and then really understanding

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migration and how people migrated into

the south, why they came and then why

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they left, which was a big part of,

you know, southern banking as well.

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How did you find these recipes

and these super fascinating

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stories and people behind them?

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Well, you know, I mean,

the stories are out there.

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I'll have to tell people

the stories are out there.

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I mean, even our own families are pretty

interesting, colorful characters, right?

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So, I mean, we, we've got

stories all around us.

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Um, and, you know, today it's much easier

to do the research than it used to.

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I mean, you don't physically have to be

in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Lupton, you know,

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collection of African American cookbooks.

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You can access them online.

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I did travel down to

Tuscaloosa to look for them.

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Through a lot of those books, and

that kind of led me on the path of

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finding the tea cake recipe, which

was, um, linked to a woman in, um,

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Clarksville, Tennessee, which is

not far from Nashville where I live.

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And as it turned out, I was trying to

find her through her children because

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she had moved to Atlanta later in life.

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And then, um, she had just died.

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So, I mean, it was, you know, I

was, I felt myself at times trying

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to catch up and find people.

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While they were still

here, if that makes sense.

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Because people who are older

have knowledge of history that

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reaches further back than we do.

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And um, and they can speak to their

parents and their grandparents.

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That was, that was tough.

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It was, it was the most difficult part

was finding the actual people, you know?

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You just mentioned a tea cake.

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Let's talk food.

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Tell me about that cake.

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Well tea cake is like a sugar cookie,

except it's Puffier, spongier, you know,

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and I think we probably in the beginning,

you know, something like what we call

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a sugar cookie was a tea cake, but

with the change of ingredients in the

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South, and it's probably true outside

the South as as vegetable shortening.

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or lard were substituted

for butter, perhaps in some

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of the old English recipes.

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Um, you get a spongier product

with vegetable shortening

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than if you use butter.

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Uh, you also with new leavening

agents, you know, say you use

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buttermilk in the tea cake.

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In the recipe, and you use baking soda,

you're going to get a lot of rise, a lot

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of sponginess like a cake, um, or you

use baking powder, it's going to be, it's

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going to rise up nicely, but it's going

to have a kind of a firm crumb to it,

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like you find in baking powder cakes.

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So depending on.

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What the formula is,

what the ingredients are.

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Tea cakes can vary from a crispy

sugar cookie all the way up to

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something that's pillowy like a cake.

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You describe Southern baking as

the first and possibly finest style

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of baking America has ever known.

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Can you explain that?

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That's right.

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Are we ready for a food fight?

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I wasn't ready to make that

statement until I had done the

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research and wrote the book.

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Um, but I do believe that it is

the first and the finest because

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of the breadth of the recipes.

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There are so many recipes.

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And what it draws from are the

English and the French recipes for

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baking and a lot of German recipes.

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And, you know, depending on the people,

you know, a lot of these recipes

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were written down, but some were not.

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Um, you know, as, um, I forgot who

my source was said that, you know,

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the, a lot of the English authors,

um, and the, uh, did a great service

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because typically English people

weren't, didn't write things down.

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The Germans did.

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They wrote everything down.

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They kept the beautiful diaries

and they wrote all the, you know,

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beautiful early cookbooks in America.

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Um, but it was after the civil war, um,

there were, uh, charitable cookbooks

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were written in the South to raise money.

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To build hospitals and

to help and feed people.

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And it was those cookbooks that were

seen as not just fundraisers, but as

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preservation, because they documented

the recipes that were baked in the

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homes, you know, in the 19th century.

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And as a result, those recipes have

been carried down and carried down.

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But a lot of the baking in the South

and outside had to do with, did

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you have access to sugar, flour?

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Did you live on a farm

and have eggs and butter?

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Um, and did you have the means then?

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Did you have labor to cook?

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Did you cook it or did you have slaves?

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I, it, you know, I think

that's where baking gets really

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complicated in the South.

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And I talk about all of that, but

I do believe as a region compared

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to the Northeast, compared to the

West, that Southern baking was the

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first and the finest style of baking

because of its sheer grand variety.

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You were raised in Tennessee.

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It's where you live now.

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Can you talk about how baking there

differs from the rest of the South?

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That's a good question, Tennessee

and Kentucky are both in the upper

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South, uh, in Virginia as well.

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Virginia's a completely different state

baking wise because you have the tide

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water and you've got the mountain, uh, but

Tennessee and Kentucky are quite similar.

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We would have had German influences coming

down from the mid, late 20th century.

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Midwest.

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We're both, uh, Nashville is a

river town, the Cumberland River.

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Nashville was the home of Martha

White cornmeal and flour, which

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was tied to the Grand Ole Opry.

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They both promoted each other.

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It was a good symbiotic

relationship there.

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And then I think it was a lot like

Louisville, you know, which was

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further north, also along a river.

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Um, but we, uh, the, the, where

Tennessee and Kentucky sort of hit

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each other on that line, that was

the wheat and Corn Belt of the South.

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Those were the plains that those

were the land was flat out and

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we were nothing like the Midwest.

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But if there was a Midwest in the

South, that would have been it

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because we don't have mountains.

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We don't have the coastlines.

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Um, so it was very agricultural.

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And I think, uh, people came into that

area to grow tobacco and they found

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that, you know, corn and tobacco kind of.

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Worked along the same kind of schedule,

and as a result, a lot of cornmeal

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was really was grown in this area.

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So chest pie, for example, chest pie, you

see that recipe throughout the southeast.

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It is like an old desperation

pie, transparent pie, you

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eggs and sugar and butter.

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But in Nashville, in Middle Tennessee,

we thicken it with cornmeal.

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So to me, and a little bit of vinegar.

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We didn't, you know, early cooks

did not have access to citrus.

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So there would have been no lemons or

oranges in this area of the South going

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into pie, we would have used vinegar.

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And, and so to me, Chef's pie has to

have that tang to it, you know, I've

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got to taste the vinegar and there's

got to be a little grit in there

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from the cornmeal that is Chef's pie.

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Um, the other thing I think unique

about this area, um, is that it being

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a state capital and during the, yeah.

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Not in 1920 when women were, you know, the

amendment to the constitution for women

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to have the right to vote was ratified.

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Tennessee, Tennessee was the 16th state.

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And so our tea rooms became quite popular

and a lot of recipes kind of came out of

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that and were glorified from those days

like, um, like trifles, sherry trifles,

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um, egg bread, chicken on egg bread.

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So I talk about in the book,

you know, some specific recipes.

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That came from specific points in time.

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What do you think most Americans

don't know about Southern baking?

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They don't know that it's as diverse as

it is, just as they probably don't know

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that the South is as diverse as it is.

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I think the South as a region

is painted as sort of one, you

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know, pretty narrow and insular.

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Um, but we're, um, we're a lot more

diverse than people think we are.

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And, um, And not just, you know, in

politics, but I think in, in baking as

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well, because people, whether they've

been Jewish or German or English or

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French, Creole, you know, they've held

on to recipes that have been in their

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families because they've been, these

recipes have been baked for the holidays.

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So probably, yes, pecan pie is important,

and I think pound cake probably is the,

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to me, it's the most symbolic recipe

of, um, southern baking, and that's

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why it's on the cover of my book.

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Why is pound cake so

symbolic of southern cooking?

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I think it reaches back.

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It's one of the oldest recipes.

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And again, it, it, it talks of access,

you know, it talks, uh, did you have

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access to butter, sugar, flour, and eggs?

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And that tells a lot about where you came

from and, you know, how you made your

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money and who was in the kitchen baking.

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But I think through the years, pound

cake has been lifted up really on

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a cake pedestal because, because

those ingredients were precious.

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through hard times.

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They were precious.

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You had to have, you can't really

cheat with those ingredients

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and make a true pound cake.

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Enslaved peoples from Africa and the

Caribbean strongly influence cooking

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and baking traditions in the South.

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But as you just mentioned, Jewish,

German, Irish influences are there.

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I think that surprises a lot of people.

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Can you talk about, uh, what

kind of impact those cultures

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had on Southern baking?

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Well, I think on the German

that, you know, like I mentioned,

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they wrote things down.

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We've got record of that.

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Um, you see the, the, the, the

jam cake that I grew up in, in

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Nashville, the blackberry jam cake.

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Um, we.

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You know, we make every Christmas, well,

you can see how it came down from, it's,

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it's the state cake of Kentucky, and then

it's in Tennessee, well, it's in northern

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Alabama, and it's in western North

Carolina, wherever German people settled,

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they would settle in the south on land

where black walnut trees grew, because

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they knew underneath those trees, there

was dark and rich loamy soil, and there

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would be You know, steady crops, but they

also baked with spices and, um, and the

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same can be said for Jewish people and how

they settled and came in through whether

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New Orleans or they came in through New

York and down or on through Charleston,

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but their style of baking was repeated.

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And there's those recipes were

repeated, the marble cake, the chocolate

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roll for Passover, the, uh, the got

leaves, chocolate, chewy cookies,

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you know, that can be made flourless.

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I just love, you know, when I, when I

see a recipe of Jewish pound cake, you

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know, in a Jackson symphony cookbook

or something, I always get tickled

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because I know that it is such a symbol.

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of assimilation, you know, and Marcy

Cohen Farris, who is a friend of mine, who

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has written all the wonderful books on,

on Jewish cooking in the South, I mean,

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she will say that, you know, her mother,

I think they live next door to either

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Baptists or Methodists in their small town

in Arkansas, and it was as much about,

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Coming in, preserving their family's

recipes as it was assimilating and

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becoming a part of the town and embracing

Friday night football, you know, and, and

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learning how to make a Baptist pound cake.

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I mean, those were things that you just

did and how I think in the South, how

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in, especially in cities like Atlanta.

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When there was an early Jewish population,

the Seeligs and some of those names and

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people who, you know, they employed,

um, African American cooks in the

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kitchen and that relationship, and

there was one caterer, Mary Bell Jordan,

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who was Vernon Jordan's, uh, mother.

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Uh, she was a very famous caterer

in Atlanta and she catered all

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of the Jewish weddings and, um,

holidays, uh, and she just kept

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this treasure trove of, um, food.

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Of kosher recipes that she knew how to

prepare, but no, I think, um, and then

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the French influence obviously through

New Orleans, through Charleston, it

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was fascinating to see, to, to learn

that Baba Aram, you know, is still

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made on Christmas Eve and, and the

story of Beignets and that, you know,

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the Cajun cooks, and that is a Cajun

recipe, Acadian, so that is a French

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recipe as well, frying, but the black

cooks throughout the South, understood

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frying and that's why fried foods, you

know, are a part of the Southern story.

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And I did put some fried foods in the,

in a chapter in this book, even though

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they're not baked, there's still very

much the beignets, the collage, um,

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fritters, banana fritters, apple fritters,

they're all part of, of a sort of that

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mishmash in the South, the French,

black, Caribbean, Jewish, it's all here.

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And it's all in the recipes.

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The history of the South is as

rich in your book as the recipes.

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And you talk about the

complicated history of the South.

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You write all visions of gone with the

wind aside, the South was largely poor.

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So what direct impact did that have on

the baking that came out of the South?

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And Are there any examples

of that that were so popular

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they're still around today?

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Well, cornbread.

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Cornbread is the example.

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And that's why I began

the book with cornbread.

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I mean, we, yeah, you're right.

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You may think of the South as lofty

and pancakes and southern soft yeast

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rolls, but most people like cornbread

because corn grew everywhere.

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Corn grew everywhere.

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Uh, and you could feed your family

with a patch of corn, you know,

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from the back, from the backyard.

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So, and have it milled

yourself or milled in town.

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Um, so cornbread, and cornbread is

baked differently and it's looked

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at differently across the South.

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I mean, whether you bake cornbread

with white or yellow cornmeal, or you

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pour it onto a griddle and cook it

like a corn cake, or if you put it in a

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skillet and make a big pan of cornbread.

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Dad.

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is southern baking and it's simplest

and most honest and real because all you

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really needed was a liquid and meal and

You could have some leavening in there

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if you wanted to early recipes didn't

maybe an egg if you had chickens That's

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it and can home cooks in the north in the

midwest on the west coast Create these

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southern bakes even without access to

some of the more Traditional southern

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ingredients like white lily flower.

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Oh, yeah, definitely and I go into flower

at the beginning of the book uh, because

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there is uh What you said is exactly

true The spirit of Southern banking

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is that you should use what you have.

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So it would have been complete

disservice for me to write this book

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and say, well, you've got to have

like Lily, or you've got to have, you

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know, Carolina ground or whatever.

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No, you've got to use what you

have that is Southern banking.

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And then, but learn how to adapt it.

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in a southern way to the recipe.

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And maybe you make the biscuits

with your local flour, but you find

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that they're a little too hard.

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So how do you soften that flour?

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Well, the next time you use two thirds

of that flour and you add another

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third in of cake flour, something even

like, you know, even King Arthur's

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cake flour or Swansdown cake flour,

which has a lower protein count, it

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reduces the gluten in your flour.

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And they're going to

be softer and fluffier.

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So I give you a lot of tips for biscuit

making, um, using what you have.

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Anne Byrne, your new book, Baking

in the American South, 200 recipes

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that are untold stories is full of

history as well as fantastic recipes.

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Great.

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Good luck with the book and thank you for

talking about it with me this morning.

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Oh, thank you.

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Thank you for having me.

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That's a lot of effort and

research that went into that book.

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Long time.

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She says three years.

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I could believe it.

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That's a lot of research.

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There's a lot of research.

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There's a lot of recipes I want to try.

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And you know, this is a

really interesting question.

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And this is, this doesn't have

anything to and burn in her books.

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But this baking in the American

South thing, the South is really

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known, right, for great baking

pies and cakes and all that stuff.

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But other parts of the country are too.

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And how come we don't see

baking in New England and baking

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in the Midwest and baking in

California, the Pacific Northwest?

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I don't know.

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I'm being silly, but regional baking.

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I don't think any region.

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I think baking in the South is

sells outside of the South, but

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that baking in New England wouldn't

sell outside of New England.

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Does that make any sense?

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It does.

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The South has, the South has had

an image for centuries, right?

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New England, eh, it's so small, and Well,

I mean, the South's Imagery is founded

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on enslaved peoples and the baking that

enslaved peoples did in plantation homes.

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I mean, right?

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Like cornbread and that kind of stuff.

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That's right.

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As you said, a lot of it is

based on the enslaved peoples.

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And yet, of course, there is a lot

of baking to be had in New England.

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:

But my hunch is a book baking

in New England would not

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sell outside of New England.

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And I don't think it's as varied up here.

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You got, you know, But the variety

of what you could do and call it

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from the South is so different.

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And as she said, the South

incorporates so much more.

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I mean, she's got 14 states,

plus you've got the border states

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where things bleed through.

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What do we got?

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New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine.

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But we have a storied past and

a storied history and a system.

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history that for many people is

foundational to the United States.

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:

It's just an interesting set of problems.

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Before we get to the final segment of

this podcast, let's say that it would

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be great if you could rate this podcast.

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Can we ask for five stars?

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:

And if you could write a review,

if a platform allows it, like

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:

Apple podcast, even just nice

podcast does wonders for us.

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:

We are unsupported in any way.

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:

That is the way that you can support us.

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And we most appreciate it.

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All right.

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:

As is traditional, the final segment of

this podcast, what's making us happy?

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in food this week.

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And I'm going first.

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I never go first, but I'm going first.

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And what's making me happy in

food this week is our pears.

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And here's why we went to Costco

last week and we saw I walked.

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We didn't see.

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I walked past the pears out

in the produce section and I

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could smell them as I walk past.

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I had to stop and say, Wait, where's that?

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And I did a little research about Costco

and fruit, and we've had a spectacular

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time with plums and peaches and nectarines

this summer at Costco, and now we're

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having a spectacular time with pears,

and I did a little research about

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this, and it's an interesting thing.

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We know that produce moves really

quickly at Costco, and that is one

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of the legendary reasons why it's

fresh, but here's another reason.

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Why Costco produce tends to be extremely

fresh, not only does it move fast, but

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Costco wants the boxes of pears that are

closer to ripeness than your supermarket

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does, because in your supermarket

it's going to sit on the shelf longer.

429

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That high turnover at Costco makes

them want riper pears at all.

430

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Harvest in the boxes, pairs that

would be mushy at your local

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supermarket by the time they got

there and sat for two to three weeks.

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Costco wants those because they know

they're going to sell them immediately.

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So it is astounding.

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:

The pairs are just are

outrageous right now.

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Well, I'm glad you bought the

box because what you don't

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eat before we go on vacation.

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:

I'm turning into pear jam.

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Oh, I love pear jam.

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:

I do too.

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Maybe I'll even make a

pear and lemon marmalade.

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:

That's a really good thing.

442

:

What's making me happy.

443

:

As you said earlier, veal, if

you're eating veal, you should,

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you should eat veal, veal chuck.

445

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Oh, our local farm.

446

:

I shout out to Kelly all

the time, Howling Flats.

447

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She harvested some veal and I never heard

of a veal chuck roast and I braised it

448

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in a bottle of white wine with pearl

onions and mushrooms and green olives

449

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and we ate it with mashed potatoes.

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And, and then noodles.

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I mean, it was enough

that there were leftovers.

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:

still some left in the refrigerator.

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That's what's making me happy.

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And it was really delicious.

455

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It was salty and it was savory and

you didn't put dried fruit in it,

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which kept it away from being super

sweet, which is always good for me.

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It was a wonderful meal.

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And if you don't know, in new

England right now, we have actually

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tipped into fall and it has been.

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been extremely cool.

461

:

In fact, at night, we've had our

bedroom windows open and we've both

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been freezing at night in our bedroom.

463

:

So we've tipped down into fall

at this point and a veal stew was

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really just right for the moment.

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:

Okay, that's the podcast.

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Thanks for being a part

of this podcast journey.

467

:

We appreciate it.

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:

Appreciate your time.

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:

So with us, we know there are dozens,

hundreds, thousands of podcasts.

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:

You could listen to, thanks

for listening to this one.

471

:

And every week we tell you what's

making us happy in food here

472

:

on cooking with Bruce and Mark.

473

:

So please go to our Facebook group,

cooking with Bruce and Mark and tell us

474

:

what's making you happy in food this week.

475

:

We want to know, we want to hear

about it and we might want to make it

476

:

here on cooking with Bruce and Mark.

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About the Podcast

Cooking with Bruce and Mark
Fantastic recipes, culinary science, a little judgment, hysterical banter, love and laughs--you know, life.
Join us, Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough, for weekly episodes all about food, cooking, recipes, and maybe a little marital strife on air. After writing thirty-six cookbooks, we've got countless opinions and ideas on ingredients, recipes, the nature of the cookbook-writing business, and much more. If you've got a passion for food, we also hope to up your game once and a while and to make you laugh most of the time. Come along for the ride! There's plenty of room!

About your host

Profile picture for Mark Scarbrough

Mark Scarbrough

Former lit professor, current cookbook writer, creator of two podcasts, writer of thirty-five (and counting) cookbooks, author of one memoir (coming soon!), married to a chef (my cookbook co-writer, Bruce Weinstein), and with him, the owner of two collies, all in a very rural spot in New England. My life's full and I'm up for more challenges!