True mountain cornbread — stone-ground cornmeal, buttermilk, egg, and almost no sugar, baked in a screaming-hot cast-iron skillet for a crackling crust. The bread that goes under the soup beans and beside the greens.
Corn was the grain of the enslaved and the grain of the mountains, and cornbread is the daily bread of Black Southern and Appalachian tables alike. The unsweetened, cast-iron mountain version — the one made to soak up pot likker and bean broth — is the everyday bread of the hollows.
Stone-ground whole cornmeal keeps the germ and bran, supplying fiber, magnesium, and B vitamins that white-cornmeal versions lose. The buttermilk adds calcium and beneficial cultures and keeps the crumb tender without much fat. Made the mountain way — savory, not cakey — cornbread is a whole-grain bread with a far gentler blood-sugar impact than the sweet, white-flour versions common elsewhere.
Heat a cast-iron skillet with a little fat until smoking hot. Mix stone-ground cornmeal with buttermilk, egg, salt, and leavening — no or minimal sugar — and pour into the hot skillet for an instant crust. Bake hot until golden and pulling from the sides. Crumble it under soup beans or split it for greens.
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