salt rising bread
I've been trying to achieve a salt rising bread without success. Those Appalachain settlers were pretty clever, it would appear. My corn meal/milk/sugar starter mixture never starts to crank, even when kept at 45C for a day. I've tried this three times, and have been disappointed three times. So what's the trick? Is 45C too hot?
Online advice suggests to "try it again". Did that. Or to "use different cornmeal". Um, I'm not going to by oodles of cornmeal for each test.
I'm thinking that maybe my cornmeal is somehow pretty sterile, and I should maybe leave it outside for a few days, bring it back in, scrape off the bird poop, and start from there. But ....
I've made natural sourdough several times using local airborne yeasts, so this can't be that hard.
to make. Search "salt rising bread" on this forum and you'll get many "hits" like this one:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/21988/salt-rising-bread-starter
Good luck
hester
Thank you! I feel a little better knowing that SRB is the source of consternation and frustration in others. I'm not alone! Not sure I have a clear answer yet, but it's interesting to see that there are lots of ideas. Unfortunately, Susan Brown's website seems to have disappeared.
The Bardwell and Brown eHow video series would be nice, but I can't seem to get past the one-minute intro video. It concludes, and just restarts itself.
will do the trick!
How is ground popcorn different than cornmeal?
in it. Grind our own and you can be sure that nothing bad was added in there that might be getting in the way of your salt rising culture. I have made several of them over the past few years and used organic corn meal which worked fine.
in it. Grind our own and you can be sure that nothing bad was added in there that might be getting in the way of your salt rising culture. I have made several of them over the past few years and used organic corn meal which worked fine.
in it. Grind our own and you can be sure that nothing bad was added in there that might be getting in the way of your salt rising culture. I have made several of them over the past few years and used organic corn meal which worked fine.
in it. Grind our own and you can be sure that nothing bad was added in there that might be getting in the way of your salt rising culture. I have made several of them over the past few years and used organic corn meal which worked fine.
in it. Grind our own and you can be sure that nothing bad was added in there that might be getting in the way of your salt rising culture. I have made several of them over the past few years and used organic corn meal which worked fine.
My corn meal comes with YELLOW CORN MEAL, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMIN MONONITRATE, RIBOFLAVIN, FOLIC ACID, none of which, I would think, would prevent bacterial growth. I also have a healthy dose of skepticism about the importance of "organic" food, which I guess has never touched a substance that is expressed in chemical notation. But this linked thread does have a few clues, and I'll persevere.
Here is my recipe. Have patience!
FordJan 24 2009 - 2:54pmYes Salt Rising Bread isYes Salt Rising Bread is tricky and does not always come out. Here is a recipe that I have used.
Incidentally, King Arthur Flour at one time sold a "Salt Rising Yeast", but unfortunately they have discontinur=ed that item. It made good bread reproducibly.
SALT-RISING BREAD, TRADITIONAL
[1/2" slice: 62 g, 148 cal, 4.3g prot, 2.3g fat, 27.2 g carb.]
STARTER (S. R. BREAD)
2 medium, raw, peeled, thinly sliced potatoes
1 quart boiling water
1/3 cup cornmeal (stone ground process)
2 Tbs. sugar
1/2 tspn. (0.1 oz.) salt
Put the thinly sliced potatoes in a large bowl, then pour in boiling water. Sprinkle on the sugar, salt, and cornmeal. Place the bowl in a larger bowl of hot water and put it in a warm (about 110°F) spot where the temperature remains fairly steady. Do not cover!!! The starter must then be foaming, with some corn meal and perhaps even a few slices of potato floating. It will have a strong odor. Don’t let it sit much longer or it may become too sour and mask the flavor of the bread. Remove the potato slices and discard them.
SPONGE (S. R. BREAD)
1 1/2 cups (10 oz.) scalded, tepid whole milk
1/4 tspn. baking soda
3 1/2 (14.9 oz.) cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
1/2 tspn. (0.1 oz.) sugar
Scald milk (190°F) then cool to 110°F. Add baking soda to the starter and stir. Then add milk, sugar, and unbleached flour. Beat briskly until smooth, then cover with a plastic wrap and again place in a larger bowl of hot water. Set in a warm (110°F) place, and let the sponge rise. This may take as much as 5 hours, or as little as 2 hours. When ready, the sponge will look creamy and will have foam on top, and still have the strong cheese odor. If insufficient rising at this point, the dough probably will not rise sufficiently.
DOUGH (S. R. BREAD)
8 - 10 cups (34 – 42 oz.) unbleached flour or bread flour
1 tspn. sugar
2 1/2 tspn. (0.5 oz.) salt
1/4 cup Crisco shortening
solid shortening for greasing pans
melted butter for brushing dough
water in a sprayer (optional)
Put 4 cups of flour, 1 tspn. sugar and 2 1/2 tspn. salt into a large bowl, and blend. Add shortening in small pieces and blend in as for pie dough, until the mixture looks like fine meal. Add the flour mixture to the sponge and beat until well mixed. Then add enough flour (4 - 5 cups, or more) to make a soft, manageable dough that you can knead.
Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead for a minute or two, adding flour as necessary. Let it rest for ten minutes. Resume the kneading until the dough is smooth and elastic, adding flour as necessary. Divide into three loaves (about 2 3/4 lb. each), and shape each piece to fit the loaf pans. Place each into a greased loaf pan, brush with melted butter, and cover with plastic wrap. Set loaf pans in a larger pan of hot water, and set all in a warm place (110°F) to rise. This final rise takes about 2 to 5 hours, and the loaves should double the original volume. (I have found that this bread will not rise quite as much other bread.)
BAKING (S. R. BREAD)
Preheat oven to 375°F (optionally, with a pan of boiling water on the bottom shelf) and the middle shelf reserved for the bread pans. When the dough has risen (you may spray the dough with water, and) place immediately into the oven. Spray the loaves 3 additional times at 2 minute intervals to permit additional rising. Bake until the interior temperature of the loaves is 200°F. They should sound hollow when thumped with a finger on the bottom, about 60 minutes. It is better to overbake than to risk underbaking. Turn out on to a cooling rack, brush with butter, and cover with a damp cloth until cooled. Bread may then be packaged and frozen.
NOTES (S. R. BREAD)
To me, making Salt Rising Bread is mostly art and very little science. We do not know the causes for some of my failures, though we are still trying to determine them. We suggest that anyone trying this recipe, not make substitutions, and take all the precautions listed, until after at least one success. We would like very much to know what substitutions are safe and what precautions are unnecessary. We believe the primary source of failure is the lack of sufficient organisms reaching the starter to make an active leaven, see below.
A proofing oven is ideal for the various rising steps. One can be made of a large cardboard box with a light bulb for heat. (Do not let the bulb touch the box.) We have used an electric oven and manually adjusted the temperature, but this is tricky. Leaving the oven light bulb on will give a warm environment. A gas oven with only the pilot light on will work, as will the top of a hot water heater.
Be sure to measure the temperature of the proofing oven (or area) — too high a temperature kills the organisms and too low (below 100°F) will not permit fast enough growth. A temperature of 110°F seems to be about ideal for proofing. The initial temperature of water in which the dough container rests may be as hot as 140°F. This yeast seems to like a higher temperature than normal yeast.
Do NOT cover the potato and cornmeal starter. We believe the most important source of the leavening organism is the atmosphere we breathe. We have experimented with covered and uncovered starters. The uncovered worked and the covered did not! It is probably a good idea not to attempt the starter, if it is raining or snowing, since these clear the air of some of the yeast spores.
Do not use any product that has a live culture in it such as sweet acidophilus milk, yogurt, or buttermilk. Or, at least scald (190°F for 10 minutes) such a product to kill any active organisms. The organisms may be antagonistic to the leavening organism.
Be careful of preservatives that may be in the various ingredients. They may kill the leavening organism. Salt is a preservative; too much will slow or stop the leavening process.
If at any time in the process the product does not appear to be working, i.e., generating the gases needed for proper rising, discard it, and start over. The starter must generate a good deal of foam, the sponge must also foam, and the dough must increase in bulk by 100%. Possible causes for not working include the following. (1) Cornmeal is too refined, or contains preservative or has been heated. (2) The starter mixture is covered so that spores cannot get to the nutrients. (3) A product containing an antagonistic culture, or a preservative was used. (4) Improper rising temperatures were used.
To avoid off flavors, do not use vessels or utensils for the starter or the sponge in which bare aluminum, copper, or iron is exposed. Good stainless steel is acceptable.
Adapted from Fanny Farmer Baking Book, by Marion Cunningham, Knopf, New York 1984
Susan Brown says the potatoes are not necessary and gave me this recipe. It works! Remember temperature is important!
Salt-Rising Starter1/4 cup (1.2 oz., 34 g) cornmeal
1 Tbs. flour
1/2 tspn. baking soda
1 cup (8.5 oz., 242 g) scalded milk cooled to 110°F
Add the ingredients to a quart, glass, wide mouth jar, mix and cover. Let this sit in a warm, ~100°F (~38°C), place to ferment. The cheese aroma should develop in about 1 to 2 days, and a foam should appear on the surface. If the aroma does not developed, then discard it, it will not raise the dough. Clostridium perfringens requires a warm environment, about 100°F (38°C) seems optimum. The bacteria is anaerobic, so avoid excessive mixing and incorporation of air. The bacteria also produce acid and therefore the need for the sodium bicarbonate.
Modified from Susan R. Brown and Jenny Bardwell: http://home.comcast.net/~petsonk/
Thank you! I was hoping to keep the number of starter ingredients to a minimum, since I often had to throw them all out. Note that the http://home.comcast.net/~petsonk/ link appears to be defunct. I have a digital thermometer that I keep immersed in the solution. I'm going to hit it to within a degree! Now, I had been regularly mixing, so I gather that wasn't smart if we're dealing with anaerobic bacteria.
I'm puzzled about the boiling water. Isn't that just going to sterilize whatever you put in it? The real question is - where does the clostridium come from? Is it in the potatoes and corn meal, or is it falling out of the air? One of you says to cover. The other says to leave it open because it comes out of the air. Which is correct?
Yeast is on the grain. Like any living creature, yeast lives near/on its food source. The closer your grinder is to the grain source (time,location), the higher the natural yeast population in your flour and the easier to culture. As it sits, is processed, handled, heated, dried and packaged (esp in packaging that may be treated to repel or discourage critters) the yeast population will drop.
Clostridium comes from soil contamination (hence from the unwashed or inadequately washed potatoes) or people's hands (it can be in poop). Bird poop has other nasties.
Goggle is your friend:
http://saltrisingbread.net/
http://saltrisingbread.net/index_files/Page501.htm
Try 35*C (90-95*F)
But that didn't answer my question.
If clostridium is the active bacteria for salt rising bread, where exactly does it come from for the starter? Does it come from unwashed ingredients (unwashed corn meal?) or does it settle onto the starter out of the air? I think that is correct that sourdough yeast comes largely from the flour, wherein "San Francisco sourdough" really originates wherever the flour was produced. Certainly not San Francisco.
Plenty of airborne dust around from bird poop and inadequately washed hands. Those "other nasties" are in the air along with clostridium. Get over it.
So covered or not covered?
Thank you for Susan Brown's website. That website works.
http://www.popsci.com/article/science/clostridium-it-can-kill-you-or-it-can-make-you-bread
Interesting. The particular strain of clostridium that makes bread does not cause illness but they still warn not to eat raw dough and to adequately wash the utensils. Apparently, some disease causing strains can colonize along with the breadmaking strain.
Polite admonishment: Please don't tell me to "Get over it" . My uncle died of clostridium food poisoning and couldn't "get over it". Bird poop and inadequately washed hands and "other nasties" cause a lot of disease, pain and unnecessary illness. Please don't make light of the importance of basic cleanliness in food preparation.
Thank you. Interesting article about clostridium.
Apologies for what may have come off as disrespectful. My point was just that the air is filled with bacteria, including everything that is in bird poop, much of which dries into a powder that is lofted by the breeze. Certainly you can minimize the amount of bird poop bacteria that ends up inside of you by washing your hands, but you're certainly not going to avoid it. That being said, such bacteria can colonize people in particular, and hands are effective in exchanging such human-borne bacteria. Cleanliness in food preparation is important, but that cleanliness is nowhere near credibly sterile.
Clostridium food poisoning is the most common type of food poisoning in the U.S., and it happens when food is kept warm for long periods of time. I think this answers my own question, but the spores can just come out of the air and settle on the food, where they multiply rapidly.
A leuconostoc leavening. Just like a sourdough starter the yeasts and good bacteria come from the flour itself then so do the bad bacteria. This is the first burst of activity you see in a sourdough starter. The leuconostoc stage. Only with time and feedings do the good bacteria and yeasts take over for it to become a stable sourdough starter.
Salt Rising Bread sounds like bread risen from this initial leuconostoc activity and I think it'll come from the flour itself.
Yes, I believe that sourdough starter is started with bacteria that actually resides on the flour. As I said, that's why San Francisco sourdough may have little to do with San Francisco. That doesn't mean that you can't make it by exposing a sterile mixture to the air. But this must be important for salt rising bread, in that if you get the bacteria from the cornmeal and or potatoes, your choice of cornmeal and potatoes is significant. If it comes from the air, it is not, and letting it mature uncovered is essential.
I hear people saying that one must have the *right* corn meal or potatoes to get the bacteria. I hear others saying that the starter must be exposed to the air to get it. C'mon folks. Bacteria from the air isn't going to care if you have "organic" or otherwise blessed cornmeal. So this is a serious question that I really haven't gotten an answer to. I suppose that if you've had your cornmeal sitting around for a while, it'll be innoculated with bacteria from the air.