Texas Baking, Plain & Fancy

The UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures welcomes historian Rebecca Sharpless, author of “Grain and Fire: History of Baking in the American South,” to discuss how food customs shape cultures.

Whether you like biscuits, cornbread, hot rolls, flour or corn tortillas – how you answer may say a lot about you. Sharpless will talk about how baked goods have shaped Texans and how Texans have shaped baked goods, from the Native women making bread with acorns to recent immigrants spicing up their baked goods with flavors from home.

In writing Grain and Fire, Sharpless consulted some 140 sources detailing 400 years of cooking traditions that explored baking in social and economic terms. Wheat flour and sugar were considered luxuries, and cornbreads were often the staple of impoverished and enslaved peoples. Through her work, Sharpless continues to study the intersection of women, food, and labor.

To complement the evening’s discussion, several local bakeries will serve baked goods detailed in the book and the evening’s presentation.

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