Salt rising bread is a tradition that has been circulated orally for centuries. It became most deeply rooted in West Virginia, Western Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and New York. Often, the bread recipes were passed down through generations within a given family.

The earliest known written recipe, found by my colleague, Susan Ray Brown, is from an area near the small town of Ronceverte, in the mountainous region that is now West Virginia but was then the western frontier area of Virginia. This handwritten recipe was among the possessions of a woman named Rena Scott who had lived there in the late 1700s; subsequently it had been passed down, generation by generation, to a great-great-granddaughter. It was one of several recipes for salt rising bread, old and new, that were published in a cookbook issued by the P.E.O. Sisterhood in 1978 to commemorate the 200-year history of Greenbrier County, WV.

As with most recipes, the invention of salt rising bread probably predates the earliest surviving recipe by 20 or more years. In fact, the origins of this type of bread are surrounded by a mystery that has never been fully explained: how and why did frontier women invent the salt rising method of making a raised bread?

Bread, of course, is an ancient human invention, going back tens of thousands of years. By the 1600s, when the first white settlers from Europe arrived along the Atlantic coast, they knew very well what a raised bread was. They had brought wheat seed on their western voyages, excited to establish their own fields of grain. They had the knowledge of how to make beer, obtain yeasts, and make raised breads. But it was a difficult struggle to grow wheat in North America. Rye seed was a bit more successful. Corn, native to the Americas, grew best, and so cornbread was often baked and eaten in place of European breads.

Eventually, enough wheat and other Old World grains were imported and/or grown in the American colonies to begin making beer. Once beer was available, so was yeast. Public ovens produced yeasted breads in the urban centers, but as settlers moved further west into the Appalachians, away from the towns, their access to yeast was severed. In the meantime, women bakers became proficient at making cornbread, biscuits, and gingerbreads, all chemically raised by potash. Since the Middle Ages, European bakers had been using pot ash, or “potash”, to raise their biscuits and gingerbreads and to obtain a nice browning on pretzels. Potash is rich in potassium carbonate, an alkaline chemical that reacts with acids in bread dough to generate carbon dioxide gas, thereby leavening the dough.

For the pioneer women who invented salt rising bread, there was surely more than one round of trial and error using various ingredients and temperatures. Perhaps it was a mistake gone right! Along with chance, these women had vast experience in baking, hence they may have tried adding various substances for success. In addition, they knew the locations in the hearth where the heat from the fire would either cook a dough or where a dough would stay warm and incubate. At some perfect moment, I imagine, the crock of starter was placed near heat with the perfect combination of ingredients, and it rose well.

Once repeated successfully, word of the technique would have spread orally, across hillsides and down through generations. Even without an awareness of microbes, and how to differentiate between a yeast and a bacterium, early bakers of salt rising bread certainly discerned a preferred temperature for it— which is higher than what yeast-raised breads prefer— plus an alternative handling procedure that resulted in a loaf that looked and tasted marvelous. No doubt they also noticed that the loaves keep relatively well (retain freshness longer) compared to yeasted breads.

This is a bowl that Pearl Haines's great grandfather carved in 1865. Pearl used to make her salt rising dough in this bowl, which never got washed.

Because of the lengthy time needed to prepare it, and perhaps because of the smell involved, the tradition of making salt rising bread has become increasingly obscure in recent generations. The smell of the fermenting starter can be offensive to people who are expecting a pleasant, yeasty fragrance. I often wonder if the smell was not as off-putting in the 1700s as it is today. Pearl Haines, who made salt rising bread for 90 years and who taught me how to make it, said that when it was prepared using warm milk fresh from the cow, it never had the strong acrid smell that it does when made with today’s pasteurized milk. Personally, I have come to accept the strong smell of a salt rising bread starter as an essential indicator of successful fermentation. The starter and sponge smell the strongest, while the dough just prior to baking begins to smell sweeter. When the loaves are pulled from the oven, there is a wonderful aroma of freshly baked bread, along with a hint of cheese. And when salt rising bread is toasted— well, that is when memories are made.