Salt Rising Bread. Genevieve Bardwell

      In 1922, at the age of 5, I began making salt raisin’ bread in a wooden bowl that my family had been using for generations. My great-grandfather, Thomas Wade, made the bowl in 1869 as a wedding gift for his son’s wife. The bowl is still used in the family today to make salt raisin’ bread. No one ever washes the bowl, they simply scrape it clean after making the dough. I believe my family had made salt raisin’ bread as far back as the 1830s or ‘40s. The cornmeal-milk recipe that I use was taught to me by my mother, Ethel Fox, born in 1886, who learned it from her mother, Cassie Wade, born in the 1850s. Cassie learned how to make it from her mother, born in 1831. When we could get it, my great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, and myself, all used warm milk directly from the cow.

      In her rambling farmhouse perched crookedly atop the mountain ridge, Pearl Haines intrigues us with the story of her lifelong connection to salt rising bread. Like the majority of people who cherish and love this bread, Pearl’s ties to salt rising bread go back many generations. It is typical to find this bread tradition passed down from mother to daughter and from grandmother to granddaughter.

      Pearl Haines in her kitchen with granddaughter Marnie Blake.

      We know that Pearl’s great-grandmother was not the only woman baking salt rising bread in the mid-1800s. The yeast that was available then was from beer-making, and commercial yeast was not available in the United States until the 1860s. If a family didn’t make beer, or approve of its nature, then the only other options for making raised dough were using pearlash or saleratus. Before we talk more about that, it’s important to hear Pearl’s words about why she called it salt raisin’.

      You people call it salt risin’ bread, but I think it is supposed to be called salt raisin’ bread. The sun rises on its own generation, but not bread. If you put a ball of dough on the table, it will just lie there, unless you mix something into it to raise it. Just like a flat tire is raised. That’s why we always called it salt raisin’ bread. It needs to be raised up by something.

      Pearl tells us this with a distinct air of complete certainty in her voice. Her hands move in front of her as if to say, “Now, you girls listen to me!” Many theories exist about how salt rising bread got its name. With the sincerity that we so admire in Pearl, she explains her theory:

      My grandmother used an ingredient in her salt raisin’ that was called salt a raitus. I believe that the “salt” in the name salt raisin’ bread refers to this ingredient, and it has nothing to do with table salt, as we know it. Way back, people used soda or sody or salt a raitus for various purposes, one of which was to raise dough. This salt a raitus was a mixture of chemicals. In chemists’ terms, you mix two or more chemicals together and you have a salt. Same as with baking soda, since it is a mixture, it is also a type of salt. This mixture is a type of salt that raises the bread. That’s why I think baking salt raisin’ bread was a universal thing back in the early 1800s.

      When Pearl speaks of salt a raitus, she is referring to saleratus. Saleratus was used in early recipes of salt rising bread, as well as in biscuits and cakes. It was a manufactured chemical as early as the late 1700s (both as sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate) – but it can also form naturally on the ground, which is often where the pioneer women obtained it in their travels west (see page 40.) It is easy to see how the word salt a raitus evolved from the word saleratus. It is especially easy to see how salt a raitus became “salt rising” – giving us our first theory of how salt rising bread got its name.

      Another theory. After salt rising bread became a well-established favorite in Appalachia, the pioneer women took it west with the wagon trains. A second theory about the name’s origins has to do with that westward movement, when, out of necessity to find a way to ferment their salt rising bread starter on the trail, women would place it inside the salt barrel on the wagon wheel, to hold it in a warm place (in the sunshine) by day. In the evening, after the starter had time to rise using the heat-keeping property of the salt in the salt barrel, the women baked their salt rising bread in Dutch ovens around the campfire.

      SALT RISING BREAD AND DUTCH OVENS ON THE OREGON TRAIL

      Thomas E. Cooley, born in 1872, describes how salt rising bread was made in his youth (in a 1956 interview with Velma Olling):

       The cabin in which I first lived had neither cook stove nor heating stove, but a fireplace serving for both. A tin reflector about 30 inches long was used for baking. The pans filled with salt-rising bread were pushed into the bottom of it and baked in the direct heat from the open fireplace. Dutch ovens were used around the campfire on the trip across the plains, to bake bread.