Home › Cavewoman Breads, Dumplin's and Mush › Cracklin' Corn Bread
Cracklin' Corn Bread
2 CUPS SOUR MILK I EGG I TEASPOON SALT 2 TABLESPOONS FLOUR Bake in the oven. 3 CUPS CORN MEAL (ABOUT) I CUP CRACKLIN'S I TEASPOON SODA Sour milk isn't a difficult ingredient to get in any camp, and it's all the better if it has clabbered. The other ingredients are a cinch, too, except perhaps that double handful of cracklin's. Cracklings are the crisp residue of hog fat after all the lard has been tried out. This rendered pig fat is to be had fresh at any Southern butcher's on rendering days only; and the fresher the better, for that is the essence of this juiciest of all corn breads. 1/4 1/4 CUP SUGAR CUP FAT
A plain soda-risen cornbread whose whole character comes from the cracklings, so start there. The original gives no temperature and no pan, which are the two things worth pinning down.
- Oven heatThe original gives no temperature. A soda cornbread of this sort suits a hot oven: around 425F for 25 to 30 minutes, until the top is set and the edges have pulled from the pan. Treat that as a modern reconstruction rather than the book's instruction.
- The pan matters as much as the ovenCornbread this fat-rich wants a heavy skillet preheated in the oven with a spoonful of the rendered fat until it shimmers, then the batter poured in all at once. That is where the crust comes from.
- CracklingsThe crisp bits left after hog fat is rendered for lard. Sold as pork cracklings or chicharrones at Southern markets and Latin groceries; buy unseasoned if you can, and chop the pieces small, roughly pea-sized, so they distribute. A cup is generous and the point of the recipe.
- Sour milk and clabberClabber is raw milk left to thicken and sour naturally, which pasteurized milk will not do. Buttermilk is the direct modern stand-in, cup for cup, and its acid is what the soda needs to work.
- Soda and saltOne teaspoon of soda to two cups of buttermilk is correct. Sift or whisk it through the dry meal rather than adding it to the liquid, or you get soapy streaks.
- "3 cups corn meal (about)"The "about" allows for meals of different grind and thirst. Add meal until the batter is thick but still just spreadable, and stop.
- Fat in the batterUse the cracklings' own rendered lard if you have it, or bacon drippings. This is not a recipe that improves with butter or oil.
- YieldEnough for a 10-inch skillet, serving eight as a side. Best eaten hot; the cracklings soften by the next day.
Cracklin' bread belongs to the winter hog-killing calendar of the rural South, when a family rendered lard in an open kettle and the crisp scraps skimmed off the top were used while still fresh, before they turned rancid. That seasonal window is why the recipe insists on butcher's rendering days and on freshness rather than simply calling for a package of anything. Clabbered milk had the same logic behind it: in a house or a camp without refrigeration, milk soured whether you wanted it to or not, and cooks built a whole family of soda-risen breads around the acid it produced. Sugar in the batter is a mild point of contention, then and now, with the older Southern practice generally leaning toward little or none.