Eggbread, known by most folks today as Southern buttermilk cornbread, was only made in preparation for special occasions. Eggbread was too fancy and required too many ingredients for everyday eating, despite the fact that the ingredient list was short and contained now-common items: cornmeal, self-rising flour, eggs, buttermilk, and some kind of fat. The prize ingredient requiring rationing was buttermilk. My grandparents traveled miles in the country to purchase buttermilk from a particular farmer because his spectacular buttermilk contained flecks of butter. Buttermilk so fine was saved for biscuits, and only those special occasions that called for eggbread. I loved to hover in the kitchen while Granny prepared her eggbread. She’d throw all the ingredients in a mixing bowl, using only her hands to measure the dry ingredients and an ordinary coffee mug for wet ingredients. She heated up her cast-iron skillet to just the right amount of sizzle before pouring in the batter.
