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4. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface, and knead for about 2 minutes, working in the remaining ¼ to ½ cup flour until you have a soft, workable dough.

5. With well-buttered hands, pat the dough over the bottom of the jelly-roll pan, stretching and pushing to the edge and into the corners. Brush the dough with 1 tablespoon of the remaining melted butter, then set the uncovered pan in a warm, draft-free spot for about 30 minutes or until doubled in bulk. Toward the end of rising, preheat the oven to 375° F.

6. When the dough is fully risen, poke deep holes all over the surface with your fingers, scatter the brown sugar mixture evenly over all, then drizzle with the remaining butter. Again set uncovered in a warm, draft-free spot, this time for 10 to 15 minutes or until the dough has risen as high as the rim of the pan.

7. Bake the sugar cake on the middle oven shelf for 18 to 20 minutes or until lightly browned and springy-firm to the touch.

8. Remove from the oven, cool in the upright pan on a wire rack for about 20 minutes, then cut into large squares and serve.

Variation

Love Feast Buns: Among the Moravians, these puffy, faintly spicy buns are served at special Christmas and Easter services called Love Feasts. They’re still baked the traditional way in the Winkler Bakery’s brick ovens and when their yeasty scent comes wafting out the door, hungry customers line up on the street to buy their fill. To prepare the buns: Omit Step 1 of the Sugar Cake recipe. Follow Steps 2 and 3, adding ¼ teaspoon each ground mace and freshly grated nutmeg along with the first ½ cup flour. Proceed as directed in Step 4, then, with well-buttered hands, shape the dough into a ball, place in a well-buttered large bowl, cover with a clean, dry cloth, and allow to rise in a warm, draft-free spot for about 1 hour or until doubled in bulk. Punch the dough down, then roll to a thickness of ½ inch on a well-floured pastry cloth using a well-floured stockinette-covered rolling pin. Cut into 2½-inch rounds with a floured biscuit cutter. Knead the scraps into a ball, then roll and cut as before. Arrange the rounds on well-greased baking sheets, spacing at least 3 inches apart. Cover with a clean, dry cloth, and set in a warm, draft-free spot until doubled in bulk—about 45 minutes this time. Bake the buns in the lower third of a preheated 350° F. oven for about 15 minutes or until golden brown. Transfer to wire racks at once and brush generously with melted butter—you’ll need 2 to 3 tablespoons. Makes about 1½ dozen buns (including rerolls).

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TIME LINE: the people and events that shaped Southern Cuisine

1948

Kentuckian Duncan Hines, whose name is synonymous with good food, teams up with entrepreneur Roy Park to launch the Duncan Hines line of cake mixes.

Pete Jones opens a barbecue joint in Ayden, North Carolina (“The Collard Capital of the World”), pit-barbecuing whole hogs the way his family has done since the 1830s. Word spreads and soon people drive miles out of their way just to eat at Jones’s Skylight Inn. In the mid-1990s, National Geographic will dub it “The Barbecue Capital of the World.”

1949

Lou Bono fires up the pits at his new Jacksonville, Florida, barbecue restaurant and begins roasting meat low and slow over hardwood coals. He also concocts a smoky-peppery sauce to go with it. That original Bono’s Pit Bar-B-Q spawned some two dozen more in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Colorado.

America’s first big cook-off, the National Chicken Cooking Contest, takes place on the Delmarva Peninsula (the Chesapeake’s Eastern Shore). It becomes an annual event though its venue changes from year to year.

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Heirloom Recipe

SALT-RISING BREAD

Try as I would, I could not make salt-rising bread, indeed couldn’t even get the “starter” to fizz. My failure got me to thinking: In the old days, Southerners used unpasteurized milk and locally ground cornmeal that hadn’t been irradiated. Moreover, their kitchens weren’t overheated