Early Salt Rising Recipes

The earliest known recipe for Salt Rising Bread dates back to 1778 and is a product of its surroundings as yeast was not always easily purchased or found in rural markets. Historians credit Rena Scott of Ronceverte with providing the earliest known recipe in the The Greenbrier P.E.O. Cookbook (1778). Ronceverte is a city in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, United States, on the Greenbrier River. (As far as I can tell P.E.O. stands for Philanthropic Educational Organization.) I could not find this recipe or cookbook online.

Salt Rising Bread: Recipes and Heartfelt Stories of a Nearly Lost Appalachian Tradition (2016)
by Genevieve Bardwell and Susan Ray Brown

For Salt Rising Bread, expert bakers Susan Brown and Jenny Bardwell set out to rediscover the secrets and the science behind the bread's "wild microbes," unique fermentation and memorable taste. Their search took them from the parlors of Appalachian bread-making elders to the laboratory of a renowned pathologist -- to the pages of rare cookbooks, bread museums and pioneer diaries. Salt Rising Bread is a richly illustrated, recipe-filled treasure of American culinary lore. Bardwell and Brown collected 150-200 salt rising bread recipes which they published in this book.

The history of salt rising bread is centuries long, beginning in the 1700s when the Appalachian pioneer women perfected the skills to make it successfully. West Virginia is one of the salt rising bread capitals of the world. For example, in Marion County, and, in particular, Fairview, almost everyone has a personal salt rising recipe from their grandma, or they know someone who does. This is also true in Greenbrier County. Susan’s grandmother’s recipe is famous in the Ronceverte area.

Genevieve usually begins the starter around 9 p.m., so the fermentation in the starter will be ready around 5-6 a.m. If this is too early for you, then begin your starter later, like at 10 p.m. Or, you can begin the fermentation at 10 in the morning. This will enable you to make your sponge around 7 p.m., your dough around 8 p.m., and have warm loaves fresh from the oven by 9:30 p.m.

Both of the below recipes are featured in Salt Rising Bread and were the ones the authors learned from:

Pearl Haines’s Salt Rising Bread Recipe

Pearl Haines is a Pennsylvania woman who baked salt rising bread for some 90 years.

Starter:
1/2 cup scalded milk
3 teaspoons cornmeal
1 teaspoon flour
1/8 teaspoon baking soda

Pour scalded milk onto dry ingredients and stir. Keep warm overnight until foamy.

Sponge:
2 cups of warm water
1 1/2 cups flour

After the raisin’ has foamed and has a rotten cheese smell, in a medium-sized bowl add 2 cups of warm water to mixture, then enough flower (about 1 1/2 cups) to make like a thin pancake batter. Stir and allow to rise again until it becomes foamy. This usually takes about 1 - 2 hours.

Dough:
1 cup of warm water for each loaf of bread you want to make
3-4 cups of flour for each loaf of bread you want to make
1/2 teaspoon of salt for each loaf

Next, add 1 cup of warm water for each loaf of bread you want to make, up to 6 loaves (e.g., 6 cups of water makes 6 loaves of bread). Add salt and enough flour (20 cups for 6 loaves or about one 5 pound bag of flour plus 1/3 bag of flour). Knead to form the dough.

Divide dough into sections so that each fills half the pan (about a pound and half or more). Form dough with smooth side up. Grease tops. Place in greased bread pans. Set the loaves in a warm place till they rise to the top of the pans, 1.5 to 3 hours – sometimes longer if it is a cold day. If desired, you can make a diluted egg wash to brush on top of the loaves before they go into the oven.

Bake at 350 degrees for 35 to 45 minutes (one posting of this recipe said 400 degrees for 25-30 minutes) until golden brown and loaves sound hollow when tapped.

Katheryn Rippetoe Erwin’s Salt Rising Bread

This recipe is from Susan Ray Brown’s grandmother.

Starter:
1 medium Irish potato, sliced
1 tablespoon cornmeal
¼ teaspoon soda
¼ teaspoon salt
2 cups boiling water

Place the sliced potato (peeled or unpeeled) in a jar or bowl. Add the cornmeal, soda, salt, and boiling water. Stir or shake slightly. Cover with a cloth and keep in a warm (104-110 degrees) place for 8-10 hours, until it is foamy and has the salt rising “aroma” (like dirty gym shoes or old cheese).

Sponge:
2 cups of very warm water
½ cup of shortening
1 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons sugar
5 cups flour

Next, pour off the liquid into a large bowl and discard the potatoes. Mix 2 cups of very warm water with ½ cup of shortening. Then add salt, sugar, and flour. Combine with rising mixture (starter) to make a stiff batter. Let this rise until double in bulk, about an hour.

Dough:
6 cups of flour

Work in 6 cups of flour, to make a soft dough. Divide into 3 portions. Let rise 10 minutes. Knead for 3 minutes. Place in 3 greased pans. Let rest until dough reaches the top of the pan.

4. Bake at 450 degrees for 15 minutes, then at 400 degrees for 25 minutes (one posting of this recipe said 375 degrees for 30-45 minutes), until golden on top. The finished loaf should have a flat top.

Makes 3 loaves

Hattie Morton Speed’s Salt Rising Bread
Source: Speed Family Heritage Recipes cookbook, 2016

Before her death in 1897, Hattie Morton Speed recorded this family recipe also popular in West Virginia, western Pennsylvania and New York, according to the new Speed Family Heritage Recipes cookbook. This recipe and others Speed collected from family and friends comprises the new cookbook whose sales benefit the museum house and grounds on Bardstown Road and celebrate the 200th anniversary of the 14-room brick house sold off by the Speed family in 1865.

For the starter:
1 cup warm milk
1 tablespoon sugar, stirred into the warm milk
1/2 cup cornmeal that must contain germ. Grist mill ground corn is called for, not commodity cornmeal
1 teaspoon salt

For the sponge:
2 cups warm water
2 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons melted butter
2 cups all-purpose flour

For the bread:
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon warm water
5 to 6 cups all-purpose flour

Mix starter ingredients thoroughly a day before baking and ferment overnight in a slow cooker between seven and 24 hours until it bubbles a distinctive odor. Do not continue unless your starter lives in this manner.

Pour sponge ingredients in a bowl and beat well. Let the sponge rise in a bigger bowl of warm water, maintaining the temperature as it rises for up to three hours. When your sponge is light and full of holes, mix baking soda with warm water and blend. Mix in five-and-a-quarter to five-and-a-half cups of flour and knead until the dough is manageable.

Divide into three and shape each into a loaf, placing them into three well-greased loaf pans. Allow loaves to rise at least two-and-half times original size in a warm place for five hours. To maintain a rising temperature of 85 degrees, set loaf pans in warm water.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and bake bread for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake for 20 minutes. Loaves will be light golden brown when done.

Makes three loaves

1881 recipe from Detroit Free Press

Michigan food writer Della Lutes spurred my interest in salt rising bread in a passage from her 1939 The Country Kitchen, in which Lutes recalls growing up on an 1880s farm in Jackson County. Lutes writes that her father said, "'There was nothing to get your teeth into (in yeast bread), and it wasn't fit for a dog.' … As for him, he wanted salt risin' bread and he wanted it fresh."

Lutes quotes this 1881 recipe from the Detroit Free Press: "In the evening scald two tablespoons of cornmeal, a pinch of salt and one of sugar with sweet milk and set in a warm place until morning. (With the charming insouciance of old-time recipes this does not state how much milk, but I should judge it means just enough to make a mush, perhaps a cupful.) In the morning, scald a teaspoonful of sugar, one of salt, half as much soda with a pint of boiling water; add cold water until lukewarm, then put in the mush made the night before and thicken to a batter with flour; put in a close vessel and set in a kettle of warm water (not too hot); when light mix stiff (presumably with flour), adding a little shortening; mould into loaves and let rise again. Then bake."

That Lutes remembered her mother baking this bread in rural Michigan suggests to me that salt rising bread is not strictly an Appalachian tradition. Her father, like many a "York Stater," arrived in Michigan from western New York before the territory attained statehood in 1837. He brought his love of the quirky bread with him.

A tip: Set your starter working Friday night, for baking late Saturday. Atop the water heater is often the right temperature (104 to 110 degrees, much higher than for a yeast dough) but before you begin, find a spot where that temperature is consistent. You'll need it again for the sponge, but the dough itself rises at a lower temperature (85 to 95 degrees).

Salt rising bread

Adapted from the Detroit Free Press, 1881, via Della Lutes' "The Country Kitchen" (1939). Baking salt rising bread is no time for experimentation, especially the first several times you have a go at it. Follow these directions carefully, and be aware that even seasoned salt rising bread bakers fail occasionally. This recipe will yield 1 loaf.

2 tablespoons cornmeal
A pinch each of salt and sugar
1 cup whole milk, or just enough to make a mush
1 teaspoon each: sugar, salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups boiling water
Cold water to reduce boiling water to lukewarm
3 to 4 cups flour, divided
2 tablespoons butter, lard or bacon grease, melted and cooled

1. In the evening before you plan to bake, combine cornmeal, salt, sugar and milk in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Cook, stirring frequently, until mixture thickens and steams. Remove from heat. Transfer to a heavy jar or crockery bowl; cover loosely. Place in a warm place (104-110 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight or until foamy, 6 to 8 hours.

2. When the starter is foamy, scald 1 teaspoon sugar and salt, baking soda and boiling water; add enough cold water to make the mixture lukewarm (just more than blood temperature). Combine starter with this mixture, and thicken to pancake batter consistency with 1 to 2 cups flour. Transfer to another heavy jar or crockery bowl, and set again in a warm place until light and foamy, 2 1/2 to 3 hours.

3. Stir in the remaining flour and the melted fat until mixture is stiff. Shape into a loaf, place in a lightly greased 9-by-5-inch bread pan and let rise in a warm place (85 to 95 degrees) until the dough rounds the top of the pan, which may take 5 to 6 hours.

4. Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Bake the bread for 10 minutes; reduce heat to 350 degrees, and bake an additional 20 to 30 minutes, or until bread is nicely browned and sounds hollow when thumped. Cool for 60 minutes before cutting.

Makes: 1 loaf, 10 slices