Buttermilk Cornbread

I could make a meal out of just buttered cornbread. Except perhaps for barbecue, cornbread is as close to religion in the South as any particular food gets. At the top of the list of cornbread sins is adding sugar. You will notice a complete lack of sugar in this cornbread recipe. Sugar is more often found in what is referred to derisively as “Yankee cornbread.” Adherents of white versus yellow cornmeal are like Methodists and Baptists: some think you’re going to hell if you follow one path and not the other. I am of the white cornmeal sect. The theory is that white corn was less hybridized and closer to the original grain than yellow. Plain white cornmeal can be surprisingly tricky to find, even in Atlanta; most of what lines the grocery store shelves is a mix or self-rising, which already contains the leavener that makes the cornmeal rise. Although yellow and white cornmeal are interchangeable, plain and self-rising cornmeal are not. Warming the skillet and bacon grease or butter in the oven prepares the skillet for baking and melts the fat. Most often, I use butter. I like to let it get just barely nutty brown on the edges. The brown flecks give the cornbread extra color and flavor.