Baking in the American South : 200 recipes and their untold stories / Anne Byrn ; photography by Rinne Allen.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Enjoy mouthwatering Southern baking recipes, from biscuits and cornbread to cakes and rolls, that will warm your kitchen and your heart.

Prepare yourself to savor the South through the baking that made it famous. In Baking in the American South, bestselling author Anne Byrn brings one of the world's richest culinary traditions to life with 200 recipes from 14 states. Get ready to bake like a Southerner, even if you aren't one!

Baking in the American South is the definitive cookbook guide to the South's deep baking legacy that beautifully weaves together the recipes and stories from the past and present. Before you know it, you will be baking up favorites like cracklin' cornbread, buttermilk biscuits, yeast rolls, banana pudding, lemon icebox pie, lace cookies, and caramel cake.

Get ready to enjoy from-scratch, Southern classic recipes, including:

Thomasville Cheese Biscuits Ouita Michel's Sweet Potato Streusel Muffins Nina Cain's Batty Cakes with Lacy Edges The Best Lemon Meringue Pie Georgia Gilmore's Pound Cake

This cookbook is the perfect gift for cake connoisseurs, pie aficionados, biscuit enthusiasts, bakers, foodies, chefs, and anyone who can't pass up a delicious baked good.

Baking in the American South will give you a window into the people, stories, and history behind the South's rich culinary traditions as you bake up your favorite Southern treats.

**Included in the Best of List for Cookbooks by the Reference and User Services Association of the American Library Association**

**Named a 2025 Tennessee Book Award Finalist in the Non-Fiction Category by Humanities Tennessee**

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction (vi)
• How to Bake This Book (xiii)
• My Southern Baking Pantry (xvii)
• Sizzling Cornbread (1)
• Hot Biscuits (57)
• Quick Loaves, Griddle Cakes, Waffles, and Fritters (105)
• Rolls, Breads, and Yeast-Raised Cakes (147)
• Comforting Puddings (199)
• Pies Plain and Fancy (233)
• Bake Me a Cake (315)
• Cookies and Bars by the Dozen (393)
• Frostings and Flourishes (439)
• Acknowledgments (460)
• Bibliography (464)
• Index (473)
• Credits (482)
• About the Author (485)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Known for her bestseller The Cake Mix Doctor, cookbook author, former food editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and fifth-generation Southerner Byrn knows a thing or two about baking from scratch as well. In her latest cookbook, Byrn gathers 200 recipes from 14 different states, stretching from Maryland to Texas, and then arranges them in chapters dedicated to cornbread, biscuits, puddings, pies, and cake. The recipes come from sources ranging from department store and school cafeterias to tearooms, historic homes, and houses of worship. The distinguished list of Southern bakers contributing recipes and advice include Edna Lewis (sourdough pancakes), Helen Corbett (Neiman Marcus popovers), Nathalie Dupree (cream biscuits), Lena Richard (apple bread pudding), and Marian Flexner (green tomato pie). Byrn then deftly sifts in several fascinating culinary tales, including the story behind key lime pie. The layout of the recipes themselves is accessible, and each recipe includes a note with details about its history. VERDICT Even with other outstanding guides on the subject, like Kelly Fields's The Good Book of Southern Baking and Cheryl Day's Treasury of Southern Cooking, Byrn's wise, winning, and wonderful doorstop dive into the recipes and stories that make up the heart and soul of Southern baking is essential.--John Charles

Publishers Weekly Review

Fifth-generation Tennessean Byrn (American Cake) provides an encyclopedia of Southern baked goods in this masterful and extensive collection encompassing the region's sweet and savory offerings, from cracklin' cornbread flecked with pork to bourbon-laced green tomato pie. The recipes, culled from magazines, historical cookbooks, and regional chefs, divide into cornbread and biscuits, quick bakes, griddle cakes and fritters, rolls and yeast-raised cakes, puddings, pies, cakes, and cookies and frostings. No-nonsense tips for delectable yet achievable recipes, each served up with a dollop of culinary history, precede pages of precise instructions for tackling baking challenges. ("The best way to learn to bake biscuits is just to bake them," is Byrn's frank advice.) Standouts include Bellegarde heirloom biscuits sweetened with maple syrup; an indulgent layered Arkansas Possum Pie with a pecan crust; and a clutch of rich pound cakes, including a recipe created by Georgia Gilmore for cakes which were sold to raise funds during the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott. Gorgeous photographs will get mouths watering while vignettes about Southern pantry staples like White Lilly Flour and profiles of lesser-known food personalities like New Orleans chef Lena Richard add welcome context. This is a treasure trove. (Sept.)

Booklist Review

Cake Mix Doctor" Byrn (A New Take on Cake, 2021) offers this pleasurable mix of craveable delights and culinary storytelling. Readers can find a pecan fix in pies, tassies, turtlebacks, and Creole lace cookies, while peach lovers can bake them into pound cakes and sonkers (aka cobblers). With over a dozen biscuit recipes, there's a perfect version for every taste, whether one prefers them light or soft, enriched with sweet potato or local flour, or wants to pair them with honey and butter, fig jam, breakfast sausage and egg, or strawberries and cream. These Southern classics are sure to inspire a day in the kitchen, but the real gift of the book is in its historical details. Byrn explores the origins of some of America's favorite baked goods by profiling the likes of late cooking icon Edna Lewis and her sourdough pancake recipe and former cook and editor Bill Neal and his lemon meringue pie. While baking in the American South was founded on a turbulent and often unsavory history, the individuals--enslaved Africans and their descendents, Creole peoples, Moravians, Jews, and immigrants--and fertile land gave rise to the towering culinary culture Byrn captures here with anecdotes, engaging prose, and passion readers will feel.