Self-rising flour...Martha White Cookbooks

Martha White Cookbooks…what can I say…I have two of them!  Both are bigger, hard-bound books with dust covers.  A little over 200 glossy pages with nice pictures.  The first one, Martha White’s Southern Sampler, is a 90 year book; the other, Martha White 100^th Anniversary edition, Southern Traditions is 100 years of recipes from the Martha White kitchens.

Both have the history of the company and black and white photos of all the country music stars who sang the Martha White song on the radio or at the Grand Old Opry, when the company found their niche customers were often Bluegrass and Country Music fans, from Flatt and Scruggs to Tennessee Ernie Ford to Marty Stuart and Bill Anderson.

What I like is the beautiful full-color food pictures, and chapters on biscuits, cornbread, breakfast and snack breads, yeast breads, grits, muffins, pancakes and coffee cakes, main dishes, side dishes and dressings, pies and cobblers, cakes, cookies, snacks and party foods, and shortcakes and desserts.

Who knew there were so many kinds of cobblers…one of their all-time favorite recipes, Mom’s Apple Cobbler actually looks like cinnamon rolls, to cobblers with strips of pastry on top, drop biscuit dough on top, batter on top and batter that starts on the bottom! 

Southern favorite pies; all kinds of quick breads, even yeast bread; although when I lived in Texas and Georgia we got plenty of biscuits and cornbread, but not much yeast bread!  

The books showcase all of their products, from regular flour and cornmeal to self-rising flour and cornmeal to their mixes and other products like grits.  They give you the recipe to duplicate their self-rising flour if you don’t have or want to buy it.  It’s getting hard to find around here in Iowa.

Of the two books I like the Southern Sampler printed in 1989; simply because it has a little older recipes.  Both are excellent.  I won’t be giving them away!