The skins and residue left from the rendering of pork fat at hog-killing times make cracklings. Ask a southerner whose memory goes back far enough to know about crackling bread crumbled up in buttermilk, and watch his eyes light up. Crackling bread has been served at the Blue Willow Inn on various occasions.
2 cups cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
Boiling water
⅔ cup cracklings
Preheat the oven to 425°. In a medium-size mixing bowl sift together the cornmeal, baking powder, and salt. Pour into this mixture enough boiling water to make a stiff batter. Add the cracklings. Mold into pones (oval shapes). Place the pones on a baking sheet and bake until light brown.
Serve with tall glasses of very cold buttermilk, and with instructions that the hot crackling bread is to be broken into the milk and eaten with an iced tea spoon.
Hint: Crackling bread can be cooked in an iron skillet or in muffin tins.
YIELD: 6 TO 8 SERVINGS