Look for Anne Byrn on tour this fall with Baking in the American South!
Join Anne in person at book events throughout the southeast as she brings you delicious recipes and the stories behind some of the South's most iconic bakes. From noted chefs to home cooks, explore bakes as varied as the accents you hear throughout the region.
From-scratch, Southern classic recipes include:
- 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
Baking in the American South: 200 Recipes and Their Untold Stories
Experience mouthwatering Southern baking! From humble home kitchens to innovative new Southern chefs. One of the world's richest culinary traditions comes to life through this essential cookbook from bestselling author Anne Byrn. With 200 recipes from 14 states and more than 150 photos, Baking in the American South has the biscuits, cornbread, cakes, and rolls that will help you bake like a Southerner, even if you aren't.
Recipes can tell you volumes if you pay attention—the crops raised, languages spoken, family customs, old world flavors, and, often, religion. Did you know that where a mill was located affected the recipes handed down from that area? Or that baking and selling pound cakes directly impacted the Civil Rights Movement? These stories and recipes, developed from good times and bad, have been collected and perfected over years and are now accessible to us all. Anne's expertise in assessing, modernizing, and developing well-written recipes makes this the definitive guide for bakers of all levels.
This fascinating dive into the history of 14 Southern states—Texas, Florida, Kentucky, and more—features stories and beautifully photographed recipes from pre-Civil War times to today's Southern kitchens. It's about the places, the people, the products and the culture of the moment that influenced what people baked. It's about African-American women and the monumental contributions they have made to the art of Southern baking, about home cooks and how they've kept traditions alive wherever they settle by baking family recipes each year for holidays and celebrations, and about the pastry chefs who have thoughtfully reimagined how the South bakes.
Experience the recipes and the stories behind them that showcase the substantial contributions Southern baking has made to American baking at large. Food historians, bakers, foodies, and cookbook collectors from every corner of the country will want this cookbook in their collections.
What Others Are Saying
“Anne Byrn makes you feel like she's at your side, soothing any baking anxiety you may have by helping you through these comprehensive and classic recipes. This is a ‘must have’ cookbook for any baker interested in regional American baking specialties.”
—Adrian Miller, James Beard award-winning author of Soul Food and Black Smoke
“You won’t need encouragement to bake like mad from this book–the collection of recipes is truly stunning . . .. Bake, bake, bake, but be sure to give yourself the pleasure of reading this book. There’s as much to savor in Anne’s words as there is in her glorious recipes.”
—Dorie Greenspan, New York Times bestselling cookbook author
“With Baking in the American South, Anne Byrn is an informative and enjoyable guide. Byrn makes you feel like she’s at your side, soothing any baking anxiety you may have by helping you through these comprehensive and classic recipes. This is a ‘must have’ cookbook for any baker interested in regional American baking specialties.”
—Adrian Miller
“Anne Byrn is one of the country’s most prolific and passionate chroniclers of American baking traditions, and now she has turned her attention to her native South to tell the stories of the inventive bakers, both famous and unsung, to help us better understand and appreciate the wondrous complexity behind even the simplest biscuit. Baking in the American South is a tour de force and destined to be a classic.”
—Susan Puckett, author of Eat Drink Delta and former food editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
“If I’m searching for a classic recipe anywhere in the genre of southern baking, I turn to Anne Byrn. Her credentials are impeccable: accomplished journalist and former food editor, author, raised in Tennessee, studied in Georgia (and Paris). Anne is a keeper of the knowledge of the best women bakers in her multigenerational southern family, and now the region’s best home cooks, professional bakers, culinary entrepreneurs, growers, millers, and makers brought together in the ever-evolving community that is Baking in the American South.”
—Marcie Cohen Ferris, Professor Emeritus, UNC-Chapel Hill
“Impeccably researched and written with affection and humor—this is a love letter to the Southern cooks of past and present—and finally we have the definitive book on Southern baking.”
—Nathalie Dupree, preeminent food writer, cooking teacher, and television personality
“Baking in the American South celebrates Southern baking’s history, as well as the heirloom recipes that are part of our country’s food culture.”
—Carrie Morey, founder, Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit
“Anne Byrn is a gifted Southern storyteller and culinary sleuth. She has coaxed iconic Southern recipes from White House chefs, home cooks, farmers, Appalachian grandmothers, civil rights leaders, and bakers from Eureka Springs, Arkansas, to Key West. Just what the doctor ordered!”
—John Martin Taylor, author of Hoppin’ John’s Lowcountry Cooking
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Anne Byrn is a New York Times bestselling food writer and author. She writes the weekly newsletter Between the Layers, one of the top 20 food and drink newsletters worldwide on Substack. She has authored several cookbooks. Her latest books are A New Take on Cake and Skillet Love, the latter exploring the history and modern uses for the cast-iron skillet. They followed American Cookie and American Cake, which NPR named one of the best cookbooks of 2016. The Cake Mix Doctor and sequels have more than 4 million copies in print, and USA Today called The Cake Mix Doctor the bestselling cookbook the year it debuted.
Byrn is a Nashville native and a fifth-generation Tennessean. For several years, she was the food writer for The Tennessean. Byrn has been featured in People magazine, The Washington Post, the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Southern Living, Publishers Weekly, and many other publications. She has appeared on Good Morning America, Later Today, CNN, The Food Network, and QVC and has taught cooking classes across the country.
