Salt Rising Bread

I am convinced there lingers in this old farmhouse a ghostly whiff of salt rising bread. This cold January morning, it joins the fresh aroma from bread we tucked into our cooler when we departed our daughter's Arizona home Wednesday morning. 

Kate has taken up salt rising bread mantle in our family, the recipe passed to her by her great-aunt Dawn Metzger Newton, who learned from her mother in this same farmhouse kitchen where we toasted Kate's bread as special treat for breakfast today.

Salt rising bread carries its own mystique in these parts. These days, the bread from local bakeries (particularly the Giant Market in Wellsville or the Angelica version sold in some stores) is popular and delicious, but for those who grew up with the old-fashioned variety, it's not the same.

It took me a long time to enjoy salt rising bread. My grandfather, newspaperman W.D. "Golly" Fish, loved salt rising bread and I can still see him reaching for a thick slice from the bread plate which accompanied every meal at my grandparents' home. I thought it was disgusting, mostly from its odor. which might be described as dirty gym socks or worse. 

He was a connoisseur of salt rising bread and often wrote about it in his weekly column.

This from November 1967:

"Salt Rising Bread.  It was just about 100 years ago when Golly's parents were united in marriage. Mother had learned as a young girl the art of making salt rising bread. She lived to be 85 years. All that time she baked salt rising and no other kind of bread. All his life it has been Golly's staff of life. Maybe this accounts for the longevity of this scribe."

He wrote so often about his love affair with the bread that readers began bringing him their offerings - both from home kitchens or from local and far-flung bakeries.

As a matter of fact, I remember my future grandmother-in-law, Thelma Metzger, soon after I made her acquaintance, telling me that my grandfather once pronounced her salt rising bread the best he'd had since his mother was living.

Making salt rising bread is not as simple as putting together a yeasted bread. It involves temperature control to grow the sponge. Cookbook author James Beard writes in "Beard on Bread:"

"Salt rising bread is one of the oldest breads in this country, It has delicious and unusual flavor and a very smooth texture. In fact, it is one of the most remarkable of all breads. It does present one great difficulty for the bread maker. It is unpredictable. You may try the same recipe three or four times without success to find that it works the fifth time."

And from the New York Times in an article from 2020, as the world turned to sour dough during the Covid Pandemic:

"... the delegation of bakers who make salt rising bread agree: You want to wake up to it! You want it to hit you the second you walk into the kitchen because it's the auspicious whiff of a successful salt rising starter, the first sign that efficient bacteria have been working hard all night, metabolizing protein in a fast, wild fermentation filling the starter with hydrogen sulfide and other gasses. It's a promise that within several hours, if all goes well, a flat-topped, fine crumbed loaf will come out a rich, yellow gold from the oven."

Kate's recipe, bearing some water spots and other stains, was typed on a computer, each step carefully detailed and described by Aunt Dawn to help insure success. Kate even had a hands-on lesson before she perfected her own technique that involves a yogurt maker and ways of turning off and on an electric oven to maintain the perfect temperature. And even then, there are occasional failures.

While I've never ventured into the world of salt rising bread making, perhaps this will be winter that I do, summoning the friendly ghosts who set their starter in this very kitchen.

And to answer the question as to why it's salt-rising bread? I read today that pioneer women always kept a bag of rock salt by the fire where they cooked. When they would make the starter, they would tuck it down into the warm bag of rock salt which kept it at the right temperature.

From Potter Enterprise, 1949

From Potter Enterprise, 1938