Salt-Rising Bread
There are several recipes in American cookbooks for salt-rising breads, but it is thought that the bread was originally made by pioneers crossing the Midwest and western prairies. The starter dough would have been carried in crocks, as the horse-or oxen-drawn wagons made their way across the plains. “Salt rising” refers to the practice of keeping the active starter in a bowl nestling nestling in a bed of salt, which is easy to warm and retains heat for a long time. The starter would provide the leaven for fresh bread, which would have been made baked in makeshift ovens each time the wagon train stopped. Although an authentic bread of the prairies, nowadays this bread is a specialty of some of the east coast bakers. The nineteenth-century sourdough loaf is known for its delicious and delicate crumb, yet also renowned for the difficulty in actually getting it to work. Several bakeries have succeeded with the bread, but the starter, made from scalded milk, sugar and cornmeal is notoriously tricky to prepare. Once the starter begins to ferment milk, white flour, fat, sugar and salt are added to make a sponge. This adds another potential complication, as salt is never usually added to a starter or sponge because it tends to inhibit the yeast. Given the right conditions of warmth and humidity, however, the sponge should rise and fall, after which the remaining flour is added and the dough made into bread in the usual fashion.