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A Brief History of Salt Rising Bread . . . and why it matters

The continued interest in discovering our family histories – the people, their stories and the details of the lives they lived – is a powerful testament to the importance of tradition and memory. It grounds us and gives us connection. And one way we connect with our past is through food.

Until not so very long ago, salt rising bread was still being made in American kitchens by women who followed the recipes handed down to them by their mothers and grandmothers, one generation to the next. In many early pioneer homes, salt rising bread was the only bread baked. It was often an essential part of their everyday lives and wellbeing.

And then, for reasons having to do with societal change, a loss of family continuity and the special nature of the bread itself, the tradition of home-baked salt rising bread began to fade. However, through much of the 20th century, salt rising bread could be found in bakeries across the country. In California, for instance – far from Appalachia – the Van de Kamp’s bakery chain sold salt rising bread up and down the state until the mid-1970s. Today, Californians of a certain age still remember the salt rising bread from Van de Kamp’s and how good it tasted. How do we know? They’re some of Rising Creek Bakery’s best customers. They find our bakery online and tell us their stories. And not only Californians. Almost daily, we receive a phone call from someone in a faraway state asking if we really do make it . . . then asking, with a hopeful voice, “Does it have that salt rising smell?” These are people who remember eating salt rising bread many years before. They tell us how they’ve yearned to experience again that distinctive taste that carries them back through time, to memories of a cherished youth with extended family gathered around the kitchen table.

Van de Kamp’s Holland Dutch Bakery in Los Angeles, CA, was known for its salt rising bread.

For both of us, Susan and Jenny, baking is an integral part of who we are in relation to our lives and our families. In our separate paths to success with making salt rising bread, we each had great curiosity to understand more about it. Even though we had the best of teachers, there were things yet to be discovered. Where did it come from? Who first made it? Why did it sometimes work and other times not? What made its fermentation behave so unpredictably? We joined forces and began looking for answers. One mystery after the next presented itself to us until soon we had quite a list.

Our List of Mysteries

Where did salt rising bread come from, and who made it first?

How did salt rising bread get its name when there is little or no salt in its recipes?

What is happening when a starter does not work?

What is happening when a sponge does not work?

What is happening when the loaves do not rise?

What factors determine the intensity of the “salt rising” aroma?

What effect does adding ginger to a starter play in the fermentation?

Why does starter fermentation often not work when the outdoor temperature fluctuates from warm to below freezing?

What folklore around success or failure can be believed?

What is it about salt rising bread that makes memories stay alive deep in people’s hearts for a lifetime?

Mystery #1

The question that dogged us from the start was where did this absolutely unique bread originate? In our search for its distant beginnings, we have asked hundreds of people to share their traditions of salt rising bread with us, as well as their recipes – from western New York through western Pennsylvania and into the hollows of West Virginia and Kentucky. We researched everything and anything we could get our hands on: scholarly journals, early cookbooks, diaries of pioneer women who described making salt rising bread along the wagon-train trails as they settled in such places as Tennessee, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Utah, and, later, California. We contacted food historians, hoping to discover how the bread came to America in the first place, and found only speculation. Even more curious to us is that in extensive travels abroad, wherever we inquired about salt rising bread – in Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and across other continents – we came up empty handed. No one we have encountered seems to know about it outside the United States.

The elusive origins of salt rising bread seem to be centered in and around the Appalachians.

Although the ancestry of many of the pioneers who first settled in the mountains of Appalachia (where salt rising bread was well known) was largely Irish, Scottish and German, there is no evidence to indicate these people brought the knowledge of making salt rising bread from these home countries – nor is there any evidence so far of knowledge about salt rising bread in African slave foodways; the first African American cookbook, from 1881 (What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking), mentions only yeasted breads.

What we have come to believe, from all the information we have gathered, is that salt rising bread originated because of the dedication and ingenuity of the early pioneer women. In the rugged mountains of Appalachia, these women were isolated, surviving only with what they had on hand. For bread they needed baker’s yeast. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the one source for baker’s yeast would have been the local brewery. It’s likely that these women developed a yeastless bread because beer yeast was either not available for bread-making or not approved of among the many evangelicals living in these mountainous regions.¹

Could our answer be as simple as that – that these early American women, out of necessity to make a risen bread, discovered that a mixture of flour and water left alone in a warm place would become bubbly after several hours and would work as a leaven for their bread? As J.C. Furnas states (somewhat inelegantly) in his exhaustive historical study, The Americans: a Social History of the United States, “salt rising bread evolved by some backwoods housewife possessed of wheat flour but no yeast.”

We feel confident in saying that the story of salt rising bread begins in the early pioneer days of Revolutionary-era, pre-industrial United States. The earliest recipe we have found comes from West Virginia in 1778. We have seen other recipes from the 1700s that are very similar to salt rising bread, though not called salt rising, or salt-risin’, salt risen or salt-raisin’.

When the original Colonists came to America to start a new life, they brought plant seeds and roots with them from the Old World. They quickly found that the native peoples here had much to show them about indigenous plants never seen outside of this new land, particularly the growing and use of corn – an ingredient, interestingly, that is used in making authentic salt rising bread. Initially, these new plants were not well understood by the Colonists. It would take time and several seasons for them to learn which conditions brought about plentiful produce. And then there was the process of how to incorporate these new foodstuffs into their diet, which led to the creation of new recipes that reflected their European food knowledge and preferences, adapted to this new environment.

Salt rising bread recipe, handwritten by Katheryn Erwin.

Life on the American frontier. The reality of these new pioneers’ lives was often harsh, filled with failures, sickness and conflicts with the Native Americans. Yet, by the end of the 1700s, life on the American frontier, including the large region now known as Appalachia, had proven to be a successful and quite bountiful venture. In many ways, the average person during this time lived better than his or her counterpart elsewhere in the world.²

There was plenty of meat to hunt, corn and grains to harvest, and squash and beans deliciously prepared to whet the appetites and diversify the daily meals of farmers and their families throughout the seasons.

The women who originally made salt rising bread were from an era that was very close to nature, organic in all of its composites and daily activities. It was an era when individuals had to be in tune with the world around them for their own safety and survival. These women knew the rhythm of the seasons, their gardens, and the fires they kept. They watched their oven fires closely and were experts at feeding the embers to make a hot fire, or spreading out the glowing cinders to cool the temperature.³ They also kept close vigil over their doughs, so as not to lose the fermenting microbes or waste valuable ingredients.

The pioneer women who discovered that they could “raise” bread dough without yeast may not have understood how it happened, but they seized the moment and repeated the process until they perfected it. And they shared. The success of this rural life depended on neighborliness and community. Later in the book, we’ll see examples of how salt rising starters were shared in these early homes, and into the 20th century. Through hard work and dedication, these women made this well-loved bread for their families and, in so doing, passed on its precious knowledge to future generations.

The Migration Movement of Food. As families outgrew their land space or opportunities, they set their eyes on western horizons. Expansion across the Mississippi began in the early 1800s and continued for the next century. And their food traditions migrated west with them. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, when families had re-assembled after the Civil War, farming and rural living continued to be an esteemed way of life. County fairs were established, celebrating the locally prepared goods. Many farms thrived, benefitting from early mechanization and the burgeoning large-scale agriculture. The farming life seemed to portray what was virtuous about the United States, promising a life of independence as well as security. The men farmed and hunted while the women prepared food and kept a welcoming home. Life was simple, but considered to be noble and good. It was a time that has been seen as defining the American character. A nostalgic time.

Excerpt from a Mormon family’s history of their early life in Utah:

. . . Both Alvira and Drucy loved to bake, especially their famous hot salt rising bread. Drucy “usually got the starter going, then passed a cup of it around to the other women in town and there would be a regular bake day. We always knew when she was baking bread. We could smell it blocks away,” said Alice.⁴

Our book honors these early pioneer women who persevered out of necessity as they were challenged to feed their families from their surroundings. More than simply a compilation of recipes, baking techniques and serving suggestions, with this book we wanted to capture the voices of people who embody a previously unheralded Appalachian tradition.

In the chapter that follows, you will meet Pearl Haines, as we learn (or attempt to learn) how salt rising bread got its name – the next mystery on our list.

1 Reginald Horsman, Feast or Famine: Food and Drink in American Westward Expansion. Univ. of Missouri Press. 2008

2 David B. Danborn, Born in the Country. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. 1995

3 Danborn, ibid.

4 William Jasper Henderson and Alvira Aurelia Dickson: a Family History, by Shelley Dawson Davis, p. 20, 2014