Crusty Cornbread (Donald Link)

I had just enough white corn meal (in our family we had yellow corn meal) to make the cornbread out of the cookbook. Below is the ingredients. You might spot one that seems out of place. More on that later

Dry and wet ingredients ready to mix

Mixed ingredients ready to go in a hot cast iron skillet with melted lard.

The cornbread sizzling in the skillet

Finished product after 30 minutes in a 400 oven

The way I usually ate it in my childhood. Straight from the oven split with oleo (butter now) and preserves. Today was some mayhaw jelly I had

The other way I ate it in my youth. Cornbread and milk with preserves. In this case figs. My mother put up around 100 quarts of figs and a like number of pears for the year. We ate off them like we were ravenous wolves.

The unusual ingredient was black pepper. It worked for me. If you have ever had black pepper on strawberries, you know the flavor. The cornbread was not like my mothers which had more sugar. This is a sturdy cornbread not really meant to be eaten out of hand although I enjoyed it that way (the pepper lent a savory backnote that made the sweet just better). With the next recipe you will see the true use of this