[0:01] [Music]
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[0:24] Sourdough as we know it today is a lot
[0:26] different than what it used to be 200
[0:29] years ago and even earlier than that.
[0:34] I have learned to make sourdough bread
[0:36] by counting every gram of flour and
[0:38] every drop of water and wondering where
[0:42] I went wrong when my bread doesn't quite
[0:44] turn out even though I followed a recipe
[0:46] precisely. Well, I think that maybe
[0:49] we've over complicated the sourdough
[0:51] thing. Uh maybe we are
[0:54] overthinking all of this. And so today
[0:57] I'm throwing caution to the wind. I am
[0:59] throwing out the measure, the measuring
[1:01] cups, the recipes, the scale, and I've
[1:04] done some research, and I'm going to be
[1:06] using some 200-year-old sourdough bread
[1:09] baking methods. First of all, what we
[1:12] now call sourdough used to be called
[1:14] levan, which simply refers to an old
[1:18] piece of dough that has been sitting and
[1:21] souring and has gone through a
[1:22] fermentation process.
[1:25] So, I've milled some fresh flour and
[1:27] I've prepared some sourdough bread the
[1:29] way I normally would, but I have taken a
[1:32] piece of my sourdough bread and I'm
[1:34] going to be storing it in the ancient
[1:37] way. And that is by taking a piece of my
[1:40] sour dough, my leavenven, and storing it
[1:42] in a container and covering it with some
[1:45] whole wheat flour. Today, I actually am
[1:48] going to be mostly using freshly ground
[1:50] whole wheat flour. This is how they
[1:53] would store their sourdough bread for a
[1:55] short period of time. They would
[1:58] probably be using this on a daily basis
[2:00] or maybe every other day is how long it
[2:03] would be able to keep in a canister or
[2:06] even a pouch that they would carry on
[2:08] them if they were walking across the
[2:10] prairies.
[2:12] Although they didn't have the science
[2:14] that we do today, these women were smart
[2:16] and they understood the power of
[2:18] fermentation and they knew that heat was
[2:21] important for their bread to rise. And
[2:24] so even though they didn't have
[2:26] refrigerators, they knew that their
[2:29] leaven needed to stay warm if they
[2:30] wanted to make some bread and it needed
[2:32] to stay cool if they wanted to store it.
[2:35] If they wanted to store it for a long
[2:37] period of time without refrigeration or
[2:39] an ice box, they would keep it in a
[2:41] canister covered in salt. And what would
[2:44] happen is this salt would create a crust
[2:48] around their sourdough ball of dough and
[2:51] it would dry it out inside and almost
[2:54] kind of a petrified way of storing the
[2:57] sourdough.
[2:58] I also read that these pioneer women
[3:01] would dehydrate their sourdough starters
[3:03] and grind it into powder and take it
[3:05] with them on their long journeys.
[3:07] Especially if these women were coming
[3:09] across the Atlantic Ocean making their
[3:11] ways west, they had to figure out a way
[3:13] to store their leaven for long periods
[3:17] of time. And this is what my leavenven
[3:19] looked like after 5 days of sitting in
[3:20] my salt canister on the counter. It had
[3:23] formed a hard crust around the dough and
[3:27] inside was a
[3:28] petrified piece of leavenin. And so I
[3:33] scraped all the crusty edges off and
[3:36] pulled out the inner parts. And to
[3:39] restore it to make bread, you just put
[3:41] it in a bowl of water and let that sit
[3:44] for maybe 2 to four hours until it's
[3:47] nice and soft. And then you can go ahead
[3:49] and throw in the flour and continue to
[3:50] make bread as normal.
[3:52] And that's how you could store your
[3:54] leavenven for a long period of time. But
[3:56] for today, we're going to go with the
[3:58] short period of storing our leaven by
[4:01] just using my lump of dough that I had
[4:04] put in our flower
[4:07] canister. Speaking of these brave
[4:09] pioneer women who came west, they often
[4:12] would keep their sourdough in a pouch
[4:15] around their waist to keep it warm in a
[4:17] little pouch of flour.
[4:23] from an old pioneer woman who wrote in
[4:25] her journal probably around the time of
[4:27] 1848 as she was traveling west across
[4:30] the American frontier. She wrote, "When
[4:32] we camped, I made rising and set on a
[4:35] warm ground. It would be up about
[4:37] midnight. I'd get up and put it to a
[4:39] sponge in the morning first thing. I
[4:42] would mix the dough and put in the
[4:43] reflector oven. With good hot coals, the
[4:46] breads or cakes for a hearty breakfast
[4:48] were ready. By the time the men rounded
[4:51] up the
[4:52] teams, these women traveling west would
[4:55] indeed make bread along the way. They
[4:57] would keep their lump of sourdough in a
[5:00] pouch covered with flour wrapped around
[5:03] their side and they would carry it with
[5:05] them. Or they would even keep it in a
[5:07] canister and set it in the sun on the
[5:09] wagon to let it
[5:11] rise. While everyone was setting up
[5:14] camp, they would mix their sourdough
[5:17] leaven with some flour and water and
[5:20] they would set it to rise on the warm
[5:22] ground. And at midnight, this woman
[5:24] recalls, she would mix the dough and
[5:27] then it would ferment throughout the
[5:28] night and she would bake it in the
[5:29] morning for breakfast. So, I'm going to
[5:33] mix together my bread in a similar way.
[5:37] I'm just going off of what feels right.
[5:40] I've put together about 3 to four cups
[5:42] of flour just using a bowl and a big
[5:45] wooden spoon. I put about a half a cup
[5:48] of lemon and poured some warm filtered
[5:52] water in there. I've also added a bit of
[5:56] salt and I'm just eyeballing everything.
[5:58] I think I've made enough bread that I
[6:00] can understand what it's supposed to
[6:02] feel like. I'm mixing my dough together
[6:05] until there's no more dry clumps in it.
[6:09] I took a lot of notes from an old book
[6:12] from 1823 called The American Domestic
[6:14] Cookery by a lady. That's literally what
[6:16] it's called. It was written by Maria
[6:19] Rundle and she really stressed the
[6:23] importance of kneading the
[6:26] dough. In these early pioneer American
[6:31] cookbooks and journals, no stretch and
[6:32] fold methods were ever mentioned.
[6:34] Although the importance of actually
[6:36] kneading your dough thoroughly was
[6:38] mentioned quite a
[6:40] bit. Next, I'm going to mix together a
[6:43] sandwich loaf that is actually from
[6:45] 1869.
[6:49] This recipe is one coffee cup of flour,
[6:52] two coffee cups graham flour, one coffee
[6:55] cup warm water, half coffee cup yeast, a
[6:59] little molasses, a teaspoon of salt,
[7:01] half teaspoon soda dissolved in the
[7:03] water. Make as stiff as it can be
[7:06] stirred with a spoon. Let it rise
[7:08] overnight and bake about an hour in
[7:10] moderate oven. This quantity makes one
[7:13] loaf.
[7:15] You'll also notice that I'm mixing my
[7:18] bread dough and baking it in the exact
[7:20] same pan, which is a nod to Ma Engles,
[7:23] who also did this. And she also baked
[7:26] sourdough, by the way, in the 1800s.
[7:33] [Music]
[7:39] [Music]
[9:00] On the prairie, no food would have ever
[9:02] gone to waste. So, with the rest of our
[9:04] leaven, we're going to mix together some
[9:06] pancakes or some flapjacks, as they
[9:09] might have called them. And I mixed
[9:11] together some corn flour and some whole
[9:13] wheat flour and some milk. And we are
[9:14] going to let this ferment with the rest
[9:16] of our doughs overnight.
[9:20] I'm also going to incorporate a little
[9:22] bit of kneading on the rest of my doughs
[9:26] to get that gluten
[9:28] going. And I would love to hear if you
[9:31] have any recipes passed down by your
[9:34] families or any history on bread making,
[9:38] anything you want to share down in the
[9:40] comments below. I would love to hear
[9:42] what you guys have to say on the subject
[9:45] of ancient bread making.
[9:53] [Music]
[10:48] So, our bread has been fermenting here
[10:50] for about 8 hours, and it's probably
[10:53] about 65 to 70° in my kitchen. You can
[10:57] see that this has risen a little bit,
[10:58] and I didn't shape it. I just gave it a
[11:01] little cut on top, and I'm baking it at
[11:03] 350 for about 45 minutes. And then we'll
[11:06] check on
[11:07] it. In the meantime, I'm going to pull
[11:09] out our other loaf. I think I'm going to
[11:11] call this our pioneer loaf. This is
[11:13] based off of a rough schedule from one
[11:16] of our pioneer women and just roughly
[11:21] made by eye. We're going to give it a
[11:24] quick stretch and a shape and get this
[11:27] ready to go in the oven. I'm going to
[11:30] let it sit here on the counter for about
[11:32] an hour while we're waiting for the
[11:34] other loaf to finish baking because I'm
[11:35] going to bake them at a considerably
[11:37] different temperature.
[11:39] We know that people have been making
[11:41] bread for centuries. And that also makes
[11:44] sense that there would be so many
[11:46] different recipes for making a sourdough
[11:49] starter. And so it kind of blew my mind
[11:52] all the different methods and ways to
[11:54] make a sourdough starter other than the
[11:56] typical way that you would find on the
[11:58] internet today. Today we start a starter
[12:02] by putting flour and water together,
[12:04] discarding that amount, and feeding it a
[12:06] new amount of flour and water every day
[12:08] for about a week. I was surprised to
[12:11] find that back in the day, you could
[12:13] just mix your flour and water into a
[12:15] lump of dough and leave it on the
[12:17] counter for about 12 days and that would
[12:20] be your sour lemon. So, there are some
[12:22] things that I would keep and there's
[12:24] some things that I would not keep that
[12:27] I've learned this week. One thing I
[12:29] thought was also very interesting was
[12:31] that they would use the same dishes for
[12:35] mixing their doughs. They really did
[12:37] understand fermentation and the
[12:39] importance of keeping those bacterias
[12:42] around and not washing them away.
[12:46] So, I don't think I could really stand
[12:48] to have a bunch of dirty dishes in the
[12:50] kitchen, but I think I can stick with
[12:52] one sourdough mixing bowl that I don't
[12:55] wash and keep that for mixing my
[12:58] sourdough in. And that just makes sense
[13:01] to keep all those live cultures in your
[13:04] bowl alive and not sanitizing things all
[13:07] the time.
[13:09] And just like Maria said from her 1823
[13:12] book, I am pinching a piece of my
[13:14] sourdough off of the bread that I'm
[13:16] about to bake and I'm going to store it
[13:19] for later. And this is how they would
[13:21] keep their sourdough lemon going for the
[13:24] next bake.
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[14:55] [Music]
[15:31] [Applause]
[15:38] [Music]
[16:31] So, what is the
[16:32] takeaway? What did I really learn
[16:35] through these past few days
[16:38] of researching old sourdough methods?
[16:48] Well, like I always say on this channel,
[16:51] I think we need to keep things simple. I
[16:54] think we're overthinking this whole
[16:56] bread thing. It's not just for looks.
[17:00] It's not about making the perfect
[17:02] sourdough loaf and having the perfect
[17:04] crumb. I don't really think that
[17:07] mattered at all back then. What really
[17:09] mattered was feeding your family and
[17:12] feeding them good
[17:13] food. So, what I'm really trying to do
[17:16] is restore home and family and spirit
[17:18] through triedand-true homemaking skills.
[17:20] And I feel that is exactly what we did
[17:22] this week. We simplified things. We
[17:25] brought it back to the way that they
[17:28] were intended to be
[17:30] made. It's just bread.
[17:37] Maybe it's time for you to put those
[17:38] recipe books aside and just make some
[17:42] bread. Enjoy the process of making bread
[17:44] with your own hands and seeing how it
[17:46] turns
[17:48] out. Thank you so much for joining me
[17:50] here today. I can't wait to hear from
[17:52] you all in the comments down below.
[17:54] Share your recipes and your thoughts.
[17:57] I do have lots more videos on baking,
[18:01] bread making, and so much more in my
[18:03] playlist that will be down in the
[18:04] description box below. Make sure to
[18:06] watch that. And I will see you guys all
[18:09] next week for more restoring home,
[18:12] family, and spirit through tried and
[18:13] trueue homemaking skills. Love you lots.