Sounds, Umm, Delicious – IOTW Report

Sounds, Umm, Delicious

Thursday, 9 April 2020, 13:39 BFH Uncategorized 20

Atlas Obscura-

Bacteria that cause gangrene are the magic ingredient in this cheese-scented loaf.

Women traversing the American frontier didn’t have time to worry about keeping a bread starter. Salt-rising bread, whose rising depends upon neither salt nor yeast, became their solution. Pioneers cultivated bacteria in the potatoes or cornmeal that they mixed with flour to make a funky, fresh loaf.

Culinary innovators, particularly in Appalachia, relied on Clostridium perfringens to make what came to be known as “salt-rising bread.” The microbes create hydrogen, which leavens dough the same way carbon dioxide from yeast does. These bacteria are everywhere. They’re the same ones that can cause diarrhea and gangrene. One scientist in the 1920s even baked salt-rising bread using bacteria from an infected wound. But the strains in salt-rising bread rarely cause food poisoning. Besides, baking the loaf kills most of the bacteria off.

To cultivate a starter, bakers boil cornmeal, sugar, salt, and milk. Then, they leave the mixture somewhere warm (around 100 degrees Fahrenheit) for eight to twelve hours. Afterward, the starter is ready for the “sponge,” or flour component, of the recipe. Given a few more hours, the exterior should produce a bubbly foam coating—a sign of its signature stink. Children might compare the finished result to “distant dirty feet,” but adults tend to enjoy the cheesy aroma of the fine-crumbed, dense, and tender loaf.

ht/ fdr in hell

20 Comments on Sounds, Umm, Delicious

  4. Before Fleming isolated and identified the mold that excretes penecillin, one of the methods used to treat infected wounds was to bind a piece of moldy bread to it. Sometimes that worked.

    But I imagine that didn’t work out so well with salt-rising bread.

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  7. And botox is made from the neuro-toxin of the bug that causes a deadly condition called botulism. And the first vaccine against small pox was direct inoculation with cow pox.
    And I can’t imagine where pioneer women could keep the sponge at about 100 degrees for 12 hours.

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  11. Someone has made beer where the wort was inoculated with in one case, yeast from a beard and in the other yeast harvested from a vagina.

    I am just not the intrepid epicurius sort.

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  14. My grandma made starter with honey and flour as a couple of the ingredients. Wish I would have paid more attention because she used to make fantastic bread.

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  15. “Someone has made beer where the wort was inoculated with in one case, yeast from a beard and in the other yeast harvested from a vagina.”

    *samples fresh batch of Snatch Beer*

    Hm.

    *thoughtfully strokes immaculately ironed and oiled lumberjack beard*

    Needs way more hops.

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