Grain and Fire: A History of Baking in the American South by Rebecca Sharpless

Abstract

Reviewed by: Grain and Fire: A History of Baking in the American South by Rebecca Sharpless Roy Vu Grain and Fire: A History of Baking in the American South. By Rebecca Sharpless. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022. Pp. 333. Notes, bibliography, index.) Grain and Fire: A History of Baking in the American South by Rebecca Sharpless digs extensively into the roots of southern foodways and unearths rich baking traditions that are distinguishably yet diversely southern American, peeling off the complexities that we often miscast as uniquely American or exceptionally southern. With acumen, she unpacks the globalization of baking ingredients, techniques, and recipes spanning centuries and charts how they navigate across geographical, political, and human boundaries to concoct what would become southern baking. Indigenous, colonized, colonizer, indentured, enslaved, and immigrant peoples from Latin America, Asia, Europe, and Africa all contributed vitally with multiple layers of baking traditions and foodways. Sharpless elaborates how, for centuries, southern baking has been both dynamic and evolutionary. From the transition from corn to wheat grain, and through many versions of king cakes, bread is the centerpiece and essential to southerners' daily diet: "Whatever the culture, grain—particularly bread—served as the staple, more than meat, fish, or vegetables" (49). What may be conjured for the privileged class may also be baked and transformed by the oppressed, although the former often denied the latter. Asserting that "baked goods headed the list of the many ways that enslavers lorded their power over the enslaved people who created their wealth. Who ate what, and who decided that, exemplified the inequalities of the new American nation" (75), Sharpless examines the emancipatory foodways of Black bakers and also delves into the resistance to racial equality, even in the access and consumption of wheat bread. "White supremacists recognized what the change to wheat bread meant: African Americans were choosing what they could eat, and the bullies were losing an element of control. Such equality appalled white observers" (126). While Sharpless argues that cornbread and biscuits are two constants that remain eternally southern, she also analyzes how and why diverse groups of people procured, cultivated, labored, and baked to make new varieties of edible goods over the years. For instance, the prevalence of [End Page 581] pecans in southern baking grew significantly at the turn of the twentieth century: "By 1900, Georgia and Texas were the centers of the pecangrowing industry, and production in the South rose sixteenfold between 1900 and 1920. Pecan use in baking grew accordingly" (157). Additionally, Sharpless notes, women were consistently the driving force behind the baking traditions: "In 1890, 90 percent of the loaf bread in the United States was baked at home, usually by women" (170). The chapters are magnificently written and aptly titled. Chapter 8, "Chiffon Pie: Civil Rights and Sameness," connects the act of baking with civil rights actions of resilience, perseverance, and overcoming overwhelming odds while also helping activists transform southern laws and society. Thanks to the likes of Georgia Gilmore and "the Club from Nowhere" (177), Rose McGee, and others, "baketivism" has continued into the first three decades of the twenty-first century (207). Sharpless's meticulous research and astonishing array of primary sources include a plethora of cookbooks, oral history interviews, recipes, photographs, newspapers, government publications, and more through which she captures the progression of southern baking from the pre-Columbian exchange to the present. The personal storytelling of family photos moves the narrative forward and reminds the reader that this is what constitutes southern baking: "If you're a southerner or you live in the South or you're baking a time-honored recipe from the South, it's southern" (216). I wholeheartedly agree. The author could perhaps have offered a few more contemporary southern bakers who transformed southern baking and, in some cases, healed and comforted others. In 2017, for example, Houston-based El Bolillo Bakery remained open while Hurricane Harvey ravaged the Bayou City and vicinity. While trapped in the Pasadena store during the storm, El Bolillo Bakery's workers toiled for days, baking fresh bread to donate to Houston's first responders and victims. El Bolillo and other Houston restaurants and bakeries both revived and...