The first time I found myself in line at Back in the Day Bakery in Savannah, I thought I was there for the cookies. The chocolate chip cookies, with a light dusting of fleur de sel, first eaten at my friend Kelley’s house, after she called and said I should drive across town right that moment because these were the best cookies she’d ever made. Which was correct. They were lightly colored, crisp on the outside, chewy inside, with chunks of good chocolate and a salty crunch— exactly the kind of kitchen alchemy that keeps people with busy lives baking for themselves, their friends and families.
Kelley had gotten the recipe from The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook, which I bought, read cover to cover, thoroughly falling in love with its author, Cheryl Day. Cheryl is a self-taught scratch baker who, with her husband Griff, opened Back in the Day Bakery almost twenty years ago, filling the case in their funky storefront with cookies, muffins, biscones (which are a crafty combination of biscuits and scones), cold-oven pound cake and fruit pies, as well as Griff’s magnificent breads. Customers lined up around the block. My wait that afternoon in Savannah for a cookie ended up earning me a boxful, plus a crumble topped peach pie that actually made it home.
This fall, Cheryl debuts a new cookbook, Cheryl Day’s Treasury of Southern Baking. It’s a field guide of old-fashioned recipe reimagining, Sally Lunn and hummingbird cake, cathead biscuits, chess pie and cheese wafers (with Rice Krispies, of course.) Cheryl’s roots in Southern baking run deep; her own great-great-grandmother was an enslaved person famous for her biscuits and cakes, a through-line that gives her work ballast. She’s now a co-founder of Southern Restaurants for Racial Justice and a founding member of the leadership committee for the James Beard Foundation Investment Fund for Black and Indigenous Americans. There’s an extension of an idea here, too, that a life spent baking makes for goodness you can share. Don’t miss Cheryl in conversation at M. Judson Booksellers on November 18th.
Cocktails & Conversation with Cheryl Day is an evening in celebration of Cheryl’s new cookbook, Cheryl Day’s Treasury of Southern Baking, on November 18th at 7 p.m. Tickets include a copy of the book, a treat made from one of Cheryl’s recipes, and a glass of bubbly. Tickets and more details available at mjudsonbooks.com.
