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Salt-Risen Bread
Make into a thin batter: 1 pint of flour. 1 tablespoonful of corn meal. Half-teaspoonful salt.
Set in a warm place to rise. After it has risen. After it has risen, pour into it two quarts of flour, with sufficient warm water to make up a loaf of bread. Work it well, set it to rise again, and when risen sufficiently, bake it.--Mrs. T. L. J.
Another Recipe for the Same.
Into a pitcher, put one teacup of milk fresh from the cow, two teacups of boiling water, one tablespoonful of sugar, one teaspoonful of salt. Into this stir thoroughly a little less than a quart of flour. Set the pitcher in a kettle of moderately warm water and keep it at a uniform temperature. Keep a towel fastened over the mouth of the pitcher. Set the kettle in front of the fire to keep the water warm. Let it stand three hours, then beat it up well, after which do not interrupt it. If in two hours it does not begin to rise, put in a large slice of apple. As soon as it rises sufficiently, have ready two quarts of flour, half a tablespoonful of lard and more salt, and make up immediately. Should there not be yeast enough, use warm water. Put into an oven and set before a slow fire to rise, after which bake slowly. The yeast must be made up at seven o'clock in the morning.--Miss N. C. A.
Salt-rising bread is leavened by bacteria rather than yeast, which makes it the most temperature-dependent bread in any nineteenth-century book. Both versions here assume a hearth with a steady warm spot; the whole job on a modern range is reproducing that.
- The hinge: hold the starter at 100-115FThe hinge: hold the starter warm -- The ferment wants a narrow band of warmth, roughly 100-115F, held without interruption for several hours; the second recipe's own timings run to five or more before the dough is made up. Much cooler and it stalls; much hotter and it is likely to fail. A proofing box, a turned-off oven with the light on, or a cooler holding jars of hot water all hold a steadier temperature than a kettle in front of the fire.
- There is no yeast in this breadNo baker's yeast in this bread -- Nothing is added to raise it; the lift comes from bacteria already present on the grain, and the flavour and smell that result are pungent and cheesy by design. (The second recipe does add sugar, salt and lard, and its author calls the risen starter itself "yeast.") A starter that smells flatly sour rather than sharply cheesy is generally taken to have failed, though this is rule of thumb rather than demonstrated.
- Measurements by volumeA pint of flour is 2 cups, about 8-9 oz. A teacup in period recipes is usually reckoned at roughly 3/4 cup, smaller than a modern measuring cup. Two quarts of flour is 8 cups, near 2 lb; expect to hold some back, since the starter's hydration varies.
- Milk fresh from the cowPasteurized whole milk works; the boiling water poured over it in the second recipe was in any case scalding it. Do not use ultra-pasteurized, which has been held long enough at high heat to change how the proteins behave in a slow ferment.
- The corn meal mattersThe tablespoon of meal in the first recipe is the inoculant. Stone-ground, non-degerminated cornmeal carries the bacteria that do the work; degerminated supermarket meal is far less reliable. Coarse whole-grain meal is the closer match.
- The slice of appleA traditional rescue for a sluggish starter, adding sugars and surface microbes. It is worth trying but is not a guarantee; a starter that has sat cold for two hours is usually finished.
- Working and the second riseThe dough is slack, though the first recipe still says to "work it well." The second rise is slow and warm, commonly two to four hours, and the loaf may not double the way a yeasted loaf does. Bake when it has risen well above the pan rim, not before.
- "Bake slowly"Read that as a slow oven, around 325-350F. Give a large loaf 45-55 minutes and pull it at an internal temperature of 200-205F; the crumb is dense and close and will read underdone by touch alone.
- YieldNeither version states a yield; two quarts of flour plus the risen starter suggests more than a single large loaf. The bread stales quickly and is good toasted the next day.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, gathered contributions from named Virginia housekeepers, which is why two quite different methods for the same bread sit side by side, each initialled. Salt-rising bread belongs to the American upland South and the Appalachians, where it is generally traced to households that had no dependable supply of brewer's or baker's yeast and worked instead with whatever culture the cornmeal and warm milk carried in. The name is usually explained as coming from the practice of setting the pitcher in a bed of heated salt to hold its temperature overnight, though it has also been read as referring to the salt in the batter itself; neither explanation is documented with any certainty. The insistence on milk fresh from the cow, an unbroken warm spot and a fixed starting hour of seven in the morning shows how little margin the method allowed, and it faded from general use once commercial yeast became cheap and reliable in the late nineteenth century.