Free The Cornbread Gospels by Crescent Dragonwagon Page B

, AND T HEIR L INE
    If you’re like most Americans, “Mason-Dixon Line” doesn’t mean what you probably think it does.
    First off, Mason and Dixon were two surveyors, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon. And the real, that is to say, original, historical line they surveyed between 1763 and 1767 demarcates the east-west Pennsylvania-Maryland border and that portion of the Maryland-Delaware border running more or less north-south … a much smaller area, and one with a much less pointed meaning, than most of us suppose.
    For over time, “Mason-Dixon Line” has taken on a quite different connotation in common parlance. Most nonhistorians use the phrase to describe the border between free states and slave states prior to the Civil War, or once the war broke out, during, and after it, between states on the Union and Confederate sides.
    This anecdotal, but not historical, dividing line is generally what is recognized as the Mason-Dixon Line: the border (as it turns out imaginary) separating North from South, and a division (also, as it turns out, imaginary) between the alleged two types of cornbread.

    A R OUND AND A BUNDANT T ABLE
    Located in Norwich, Vermont, is one of America’s best, most energetic, interesting flour and baking supply companies, King Arthur Flour—known as KA to its fans. The company’s exuberance is remarkable when you consider that it has been in business since 1790, when it sold one product: premium wheat flour, imported from England (from which America had only just declared independence). Moreover, while Frank Sands is the fifth generation of his family to be part of the company, it’s now seventy percent employee-owned. “That just seemed the right evolution for the company,” Frank’s wife, Brinna, wrote to me recently, “because its employees are so great and they really feel like they own it.”
    Unlike every other source for cornmeal mentioned in this book, KA does not, itself, own a mill. Rather, they buy (very selectively) flour and meal from about 16 mills across the country (nope, no more flour from England). Every flour and meal KA sells is milled to KA’s own, very tight specifications, one reason its fans are so devoted.
    Brinna’s indispensable, substantial cookbooks, which include The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion and The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion, belong on every home-baker’s bookshelf. The company’s website, www.kingarthurflour.com , belongs on every home-baker’s web “favorites” list. The mail-order catalogue is filled to overflowing with products, recipes, anecdotes, and profiles of customers, employees, and suppliers: It’s irresistible! (For more information, call 800-827-6386 or visit the website.)

    ·M·E·N·U·
    S TOCKBRIDGE S UMMER S NACK
    Squares of Mary Baird’s Johnny Cake, split and lightly toasted with Butter and Strawberry Jam
    *
    Glasses of Cold Milk

M ARY B AIRD ’ S J OHNNY C AKE
    M AKES 9 SQUARES
    You couldn’t get a more impeccable Yankee pedigree, where breadstuffs are concerned, than this third-generation cornbread from Brinna Sands’ mother, Mary Baird, a great New England baker. Brinna’s pedigree is conferred both by blood and marriage, the latter (to Frank Sands) making her part of the venerable King Arthur Flour clan (see previous page ). A fine baker, Brinna’s definitive baking books include The King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook , from which this recipe is adapted. Like all her writing, its style is, one could say, both wry and rye.
    Brinna’s mother, Mary, learned this cornbread from her mother (Brinna’s grandmother). Both grandmother and mother often prepared this quick, good bread. The extended Baird family summered each year in western Massachusetts. “There was a ‘kitchen tent,’” says Brinna, who visited as a child, “and this was pretty easy fare for my grandmother to make for a big family for breakfast.” Brinna fondly remembers how sticky and buttery she and the other kids would be