Sourdough, again...

I was looking through my King Arthur Flour catalog the other day, and they sell a sourdough culture which they claim goes back 200 years. It wasn't made exactly clear, but it seems they were saying that their culture has literally been culture-ing for that long. There was a slight nuance that might be interpreted to say, "this type of culture has been used in New England for 200 years."

So I was wondering... do any of you know of someone who has a sourdough culture to which they claim this sort of longevity? Maybe a culture which you can attribute to a Mormon pioneer seven generations ago? Or even a Daughter of the Revolution?

Dough Trough

Today I made bread. My main ambition was to give this big dough trough a spin to see what it was all about. In a previous life I had done an oral history interview with a woman who worked as a cook on a ranch in the 1950s. She told me about baking a dozen loaves of bread every day for the ranch hands meals. I imagine she had to have a dough trough or something like it to work up that much dough. My grandmother did it on a big board on the table.

I started by multiplying my standard bread recipe which uses about eight cups of flour to make two 10-inch round loaves. I took this to the eighth power. Sixteen pounds of flour should do it. I had worked with twenty-five pounds before, but for that I had a Hobart floor mixer.

.I made a poolish last night to get the yeast going. This morning I mixed the poolish up with the remaining water and some flour to get the dough going. Here's the poolish just going into the flour
I was a little worried that the round bottom on the trough would be unweildy to work with. Once it got the weight of the dough however, it settled just fine.


I was also worried that it would be difficult to organize the dough in the trough. That wasn't a problem either. The volume was sized to fit the tool. Here's the dough after it came together.


I was also worried that kneading it would be difficult in such volume. In fact it might have been easier. I didn't knead it with the usual punch and pull. Instead I streched it out into a long flat mass, and then just kept folding the ends over again. I kneaded it for about 20 minutes once it came together. Here's the "window" test to show it well kneaded.

When it is well kneaded, you can stretch a small piece of dough until it gets thin enough to be opaque, so that you can see light through it, without tearing. Here's the dough after rising. I can't remember if I took this before or after I punched it down. Its a lot of dough.

If I had only done this much and no more, Dayenu. I really just wanted to figure out what was necessary to work with a large volume by hand. But once I had the dough, I thought I should bake it. I had to borrow bread pans from two neighbors. If I ever get to bake on a hearth in large volume, I'll have to have more brotforms for rising loaves. Making the loaves turned out to be the most tedious task. I weighed each loaf for consistency.

While the loaves were rising I had a little extra dough, so I made a pepperoni pizza.

So anyway, my oven holds 4 loaves at a time. I made sixteen loaves. Some turned out quite lovely, others stuck to the pan and had to be torn out. Some I'll give to neighbors, others will be made into croutons. This was a lot of bread.

So based on this, I think I could do even larger volumes. It mostly depends on having enough forms for rising. A bigger oven would be helpful. And it might be nice if I had a little help. All in all, it was an interesting lesson in volumes. I think that for the most part, the pioneer accounts I've read talk about larger volumes than just a daily serving.

Sauerkraut

On Saturday we went to This Is The Place Heritage Park to make sauerkraut. Thousands of Mormon pioneers from Switzerland, Germany and other parts of Europe made sauerkraut from cabbages they grew once they reached Utah. Elsewhere on the blog I believe I've posted a recipe from pioneer Mary Helm. Today I just want to share photos of our adventure...


Here you see a row of cabbages dwarfed by yellow summer squash. The squash was planted late, so the cabbage had plenty of time to find its roots before it was overtaken.


Here's my hand reaching out to cut a cabbage.


Just for sense of scale... beautiful, don't you think?


First step is to peel off all the outer leaves. We found plenty of slugs and even a black widow lurking inside.


The heads all cleaned. I felt so proud of the harvest! They were bigger than any I've seen at the grocery store.


I used this old fashioned cabbage cutter over a bowl to slice it thin after quartering the heads. It didn't have all the pieces, and it sorta worked.


My good wife preferred to use a knife and cutting board, and it seemed to be just as efficient.


Next we added salt to the shredded cabbage. We used one pound and a little bit more for 45 pounds of cabbage. It worked out to about one tablespoon or a little extra for each head. After letting it sit for a few minutes in the salt (tossing the shreds to distribute) we pounded it with the poundy pounder to bruise the shreds and work the salt in.


After a good deal of pounding, the cabbage began to yield its water. We started thinking it would work into the three gallon crock. It soon exceeded the crock.


So we began adding the pounded shreds to a five gallon bucket, and mixing it thoroughly to incorporate the emerging brine to evenly distribute. In the end, we filled the bucket. After we took it home, it continued to exude more water content, and filled the bucket to overflowing with brine.

Now at home we have it weighted down with a plate and a weight on top of the plate. The kraut has to stay submerged in the brine to keep it isolated from airborne contaminants. We check it each day and clean out any suspect-looking crud. It should be done in about a month. It has begun to have a fairly funky smell, but the smell mostly stays downstairs with all the other funky old-house smells.

Its that simple!

'Tis the Season...

Dear Friends,

I just harvested ten large heads of cabbage from the garden. Headed now to Pioneer Town to make sauerkraut. Watch for an extended photo-documentary soon!

Yours,
~B

p.s. also coming soon, the folks at Pioneer Town said I could use the beehive oven for a bread adventure. Maybe a video documentary for that adventure...

Jealous Much?

Now brace yourself. Remember the "don't covet" commandment. I just want to share my latest bit of excitement.

My good buddy Cody (see previous posts) was driving down the road one day and there was a traveling flea market selling antiques from Europe. Among other things, there were several dough troughs. You may have seen dough bowls before, but these were troughs. And of course, he bought one for me. Here's a photo or two...





So how much flour do you think such a trough would hold? How many loaves would come out of it? How big an oven would one need to bake the loaves as they come, before they blow out from rising too much? I have half a mind to buy twenty pounds of flour just to see how it works, even if I can't actually bake it all efficiently.

And the best part...guess how much it cost?

Nope. You're all wrong.

$50

Hahahahahahaha!!!! Isn't Cody the best?

Thank You

As you may know, the DesNews did a short piece about the blog a couple of weeks ago. As a result, alert readers from Salt Lake City to Mesa, AZ sent me pieces of their own food related archives. Today I received in the mail a spiral bound book called Treasures of the Past. Thank you, Mrs. Campos. It was produced by the LDS Relief Society as a commemorative recipe collection for the 50th anniversary of the Jefferson Ward, Salt Lake City, Utah. As such, all of the recipes in the book were required to be at least 50 years old or more. The publication date is listed as 1972.

Many of the recipes hail to the Depression era, with names like "Hoover Pancakes" or "Depression Pie." The bulk of the older recipes appear to be from 1880-1900. Several of the recipes are attributed to commercially published volumes circa 1883. A quick Google search revealed this to be Eliza Leslie's Directions for Cookery, then in its umpteenth reprinting, after its first printing in 1840. Incidentally, a copy of this earlier Leslie was found in the Utah Territorial Library Catalogue of 1852.

Many Danish and English recipes were also included. "Bubble and Squeak," a British recipe for boiled beef and cabbage, reflects the broad Mormon immigration from England. "Gronkaal," a Danish soup made with ham hocks, root vegetables and green kale represents Scandinavian immigration patterns. Today I leave you with this undated Danish recipe for "buttermilk soup" or kaernemaelksuppe:

Beat until very thick and piled softly 3 eggs.
Add gradually and beat thoroughly 1/2 cup sugar.
Add 2 tablespoons grated lemon peel.
Pour over the egg mixture gradually, stirring until blended 2 quarts of buttermilk.
Chill for about 2 hours. Serve soup the day it is prepared.
Makes about 2 1/2 quarts.

This is delicious on hot summer days. It may also be served as a beverage.

The Glorious 24th

Last week after the Deseret News piece ran, I got a call from a charming older woman in Mesa, Arizona. She had seen the piece in the DesNews and thought I might find some relevance in the history of her great-grandfather, William Morley Black. Yup, we're that close to the pioneers.

She sent a copy of his brief memoir, which recounted some of his early days as a Forty-niner. Black came west as part of a joint stock venture company headed to California, and stumbled into Utah on July 24, 1849. You may recount from other earlier posts here that the first "Pioneer Day" celebration was on that date. A party of 49ers from Boston said the Pioneer Day feast was a finer spread than they had seen in Boston. So I was interested in what Mr. Black would have to say.

He stayed with a fellow called Buck Smithson, and asked if he might eat with the Smithson family. Buck replied, "I am fearful our simple supper would not please you gentlemen. We can give you a supper of milk, meat and pigweed greens, but bread we have none. You see the flour we brought with us a year ago has given out, we have not had bread for three weeks, and have no hopes of any until our harvest comes off."

William Black of course was packing flour and cornmeal for his journey to California, so he opened his pack and gave Smithson a pan of flour. In return, he "partook of as relishable a meal as I have ever eaten." Of course Mr. Black converted to Mormonism, became a polygamist, and eventually fathered dozens of children by five wives. He passed away in 1915 at 89 years of age.

I think it interesting that two different accounts of that first Pioneer Day give different perspectives about what sort of food was available after two years in the Valley. I wonder which was more typical, or more representative of the general state of things. I have a feeling it is the impoverished station of Buck Smithson.