Salt Rising Bread (as the Williams family cook made it)

History

"Dishes & Beverages of the Old South" (1913) heads this recipe "Salt Rising Bread: (As Mammy Made It.)" It is the most technically demanding bread in the book, because it uses no yeast cake — the leavening is cultured from scratch. A tablespoonful of sifted cornmeal and a heaped teaspoonful of salt are scalded with a pint of boiling water, left ten minutes, then thickened smooth with dried, sifted flour: "Damp flour will not rise. The batter should be almost thick enough to hold the mixing spoon upright — but not quite thick enough." The starter is held in warm water "just as hot as you can bear your hand in," kept covered and out of draughts, with the warning that "scalding ruins everything." After about six hours the yeast should be "foamy-light," and it is then worked into three quarts of dry sifted flour with more salt, sugar and lard.

Almost none of that is measurement — it is judgment, of a kind that only transfers by having done it. The instructions are a record of one cook's practised hand, and the author's heading says as much.

"Mammy" was the author's word, not a name. McCulloch-Williams credits her white contributors by name throughout the volume — Betsy Vaughn, Leslie Fox, Aunt Polly Rives, Dorothy Dix — while the Black woman who ran her family's kitchen and taught her this bread appears only by a household role-title the book never replaces with a name. Food historians have documented this as a convention of early-twentieth-century Southern cookbooks, in which Black cooks were credited as generic figures rather than named individuals. Foodymology keeps the author's construction but credits the cook.

McCulloch-Williams was a white writer born near Clarksville, Tennessee, who grew up on a plantation in the years before the Civil War. Her dedication reads, "So here's to our Mammys — God bless them! God rest them! This imperfect chronicle of the nurture wherewith they fed us is inscribed with love to their memory," and her opening argues that being "the best fed people in the world" let "we of the South Country... put up the best fight in history." That framing is the book's own, and unexamined in it.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon cornmeal
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 pint water
• flour
• 3 quarts flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 cup lard
• water
• butter
• a tiny pinch baking soda

Instructions

1. Scald the sifted cornmeal and heaped teaspoon of salt with a pint of boiling water. Let stand ten minutes, then stir in dried and sifted flour, mixing carefully to make a smooth thick batter—almost thick enough to hold the mixing spoon upright, but not quite. The flour must be dry; damp flour will not rise.
2. Set the batter in warm water—as hot as you can bear your hand in—and keep the heat steady but never scalding, as that ruins everything. Keep lightly covered and away from draughts. After an hour, check if water has risen on top; if so, stir in more flour. Watch closely. In about six hours, the yeast should be foamy-light.
3. Have ready three quarts of dry sifted flour. Make a hole in the center and pour in the yeast. Add a trifle more salt, a tablespoon of sugar, and half a cup of lard. Work all together to a smooth dough, rinsing out the yeast vessel with warm (not hot) water to finish the mixing.
4. Divide into loaves, place in greased pans, grease lightly over the top, and set to rise in gentle heat. When risen, bake with steady quick heat. Remove from pans while hot and cool between folds of clean cloth spread upon a rack, or turn the loaves edgewise on a clean board and cover with cheesecloth.
5. For supper-rolls: Shape some dough into balls, brush over with melted butter, place in a deep pan just so they do not touch, and raise and bake the same as bread. Dough can be saved for breakfast rolls by keeping it very cold overnight and working in a tiny pinch of soda in the morning before shaping the balls.