Caitlin Tan, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

How to Bake Bread like Appalachia's Ancestors

See a recipe for salt rising bread at the bottom of this page.

Salt Rising bread has a long history in Appalachia. Typically, people outside of the region have never heard of it.

The bread often brings to mind a variety of distinctive scents and grandmothers tending to a time-intensive dough in a wood-heated kitchen.

Typically breads require yeast – a leavening agent that makes bread rise, giving it a rounded top. It is what makes it look like bread.

But salt rising bread does not use yeast.

Recipes for the bread date back to the late 1700’s, when pioneer women in the remote mountains of Appalachia figured out another way to make bread – something no one else discovered.

Amy checking the starter. From start-to-finish the whole salt rising bread process can take upwards of 15 hours.

Keeping the Tradition Alive

From her kitchen in Harrison County, West Virginia, chef Amy Dawson explained the bread’s connection to Appalachia’s history. “It was common because we were so isolated. There were no easy ways to get to town. There weren’t brewers to get yeast for your bread. It was just through trial and error and a need to get your bread leavened.”

The bread rises only through the cultivation of bacteria – safe bacteria that is found everywhere. Recipes include milk (or potatoes), heat and time. A lot of time. It takes about 12 hours to make, a process Dawson is now very familiar with.

She recently spent a year studying the art of salt rising bread as part of the West Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program. She trained under experts Genevieve Bardwell and Susan Ray Brown, the two women who started Rising Creek Bakery in Pennsylvania, which is one of the last places people can buy salt rising bread today.

Although she grew up in Lost Creek, West Virginia, surrounded by salt rising bread, Dawson had never made it before this apprenticeship.

“Growing up I didn’t realize how special it was. I just thought it was something people had everywhere, just a type of bread,” Amy said. “But it wasn’t until I moved home in my 30’s that I realized it was only in this region and that you really couldn’t get it anymore.”

Dawson is also the baker and co-owner of Lost Creek Farm – a traveling farm-to-table kitchen that serves up traditional Appalachian cuisine.

She bakes salt rising bread in her old-farmhouse kitchen, which is perhaps the very same kitchen her ancestor’s baked in.

“My great-grandma Rachel Blake Dawson who grew up in this house made salt rising bread, and she probably learned it from her mom and so I bet a lot of salt rising bread was made in this very house,” she said.

A Twelve Hour Labor of Love

The simplest salt rising bread recipe is just flour and water. But the more ingredients, the more chance for bacteria to grow. So, Dawson hedges her bets.

For her starter, she mixes sliced potato, cornmeal, flour, baking soda and hot water in a quart-sized mason jar. She covers it with plastic wrap and a jar ring. The bacteria need to breathe, so she pokes a hole in the plastic.

“All the recipes say the same thing,” she said. “You put it in a warm place. And then they don’t say anything else about it. But for this particular bacteria that creates the rise in salt rising bread and the fermentation, you need it between 104 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Traditionally, bakers kept their starters on or around their wood stoves.

The sous vide Amy uses to keep a pot of water at a set temperature for her starters. The starters need to sit for eight to 12 hours at 104 to 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

“In pioneer days the women just knew their fires and knew where to put it overnight and that it would be the right temperature, and it’s amazing they figured it out because that’s a very narrow temperature range.”

Rather than a wood stove Dawson uses a sous vide for temperature accuracy. The sous vide is a curling iron shaped tool that keeps a pot of water at a set temperature.

She set her starters in the heated pot overnight and checks them after eight to 12 hours.

“You want this foam layer on top of your starter,” Amy said.

The starter looks almost white, with flecks of ingredients sitting at the bottom, then a liquid layer and ontop a foam.

“That shows you bacteria is working,” she said. “Those are the air bubbles from the bacteria. You want that that means fermentation is taking place.”

At this stage Dawson takes out the potato slices and adds about half a cup of flour to the starter, but there are no precise measurements. It should somewhat resemble a thin pancake batter.

She lets it sit once more in the heat for 30 minutes or until it has risen to the top of the jar. This is called the ‘sponge stage.’

Dawson says a starter can usually make up to 10 loaves and as little as one.

The sponge stage of the salt rising bread starter. Once the starter is in this stage one can mix it with flour to make a dough.

The starter has an interesting smell, one that has a polarizing reputation. It smells like a strong, aging cheese.

“I don’t want to say decomposing, but you can tell things are breaking down in there, and stuffs getting moving.”

Dawson says she has never heard of the bacteria hurting anyone; however, if the starter does not rise within 12 hours, it is best to throw it out.

To make the dough she mixes the sponge with a teaspoon of salt and a cup of flour per loaf, as well as a splash of hot water.

She kneads the dough and then lets it rise in bread pans in her oven at 104 degrees.

After rising a dough should double in size.

Dawson then heats the oven to 400 degrees and bakes the loaves for 30 minutes.

When all is said and done, the whole process is easily 12-to-15 hours. One begins to think, why not just buy bread from the store? Or just make a quicker bread with yeast? Amy had a good explanation.

“Because it would just be lost. Salt rising bread is such a unique thing. And all these recipes and food heritage, I think it’s really important to keep it – it’s what makes us West Virginian. It’s what makes us unique.”

But What’s With The Name?

The name, salt rising bread, is still a bit of a mystery. Dawson says her mentors Genevieve and Susan have one theory they explain in their book about the bread.

Genevieve Bardwell and Susan Ray Brown’s book. They are masters of salt rising bread, having opened Rising Creek Bakery – one of the last bakeries to sell salt rising bread today.

During an interview with another expert on the bread, Susan and Genevieve ask about saleratus – a precursor to baking soda.

“They asked her about ‘saleratus’ and she said oh, ‘salteritus.’ And they thought just the way she said it ‘salt-er-i-tus’…salt rising.”

That is just one of the several theories on the name.

Taste Test

The loaves come out of the oven and fill the kitchen with a warm, grainy smell. The loaves are a beautiful golden color.

It is best to let them cool before cutting into them.

So Dawson cuts into a loaf she made the night before and buttered the slices and put them on the stove top.

The finished product. Amy’s favorite way to eat salt rising bread is toasted with butter.

She recalls an early memory of her grandmother burning salt rising bread.

“She kept her butter in the fridge. I just remember her scraping cold butter over burnt salt rising bread. It smelled so good. She’s still around but when I accidentally burn some toast I think of her.”

Finally, we get to taste the bread.

It has a lovely, crunchy crust, and each bite makes itself known. Dawson describes it as a “stick to your teeth like chewiness.” It’s uniquely delicious.

This story is part of an episode of Inside Appalachia that explores traditional folkways. To listen to the full episode click here.

**This article was updated on April 1, 2019 at 12:15 p.m. to correct the spelling of “sous vide.”

A salt rising bread recipe from Genevieve Bardwell’s and Susan Ray Brown’s book called “Salt Rising Bread: Recipes and Heartfelt Stories of a Nearly Lost Appalachian Tradition.” Both women mentored Amy during her year of learning how to bake salt rising bread.

Making a Living as a Traditional Weaver in Appalachia

Editor’s Note: It is with great sadness to report that Jane Gilchrist passed away Friday, March 8, 2019. The West Virginia Public Broadcasting team offers its deepest sympathies and condolences to Jane’s family and friends. Click here for Jane’s obituary.

Most Americans typically wear clothes made in factories overseas. The same goes for fabrics in homes, such as potholders, rugs and blankets. But it has not always been this way.

Hand weavers once made a majority of people’s fabrics and rugs using old wooden fashioned looms that one can often find today in a historical museum. But as the textile industry became more industrialized, hand weavers no longer were a necessity.

However, there are some people who still remember the craft of weaving and even practice it today. One such person is Jane Gilchrist.

Her shop is just off a narrow neighborhood road in Stonewood, West Virginia. It is a small, brick store with a sign titled, “Loomy Ladi Handwovens.”

The Art of Weaving

When she is weaving, Gilchrist sits on a sheepskin covered bench facing the loom.

On the day I visited, she wore a green top patterned with teal petunia petals. Her nails were painted a rouge pink.

Jane weaving a pot holder. She said she is drawn to weaving because it is a relaxing, repetitive movement that still requires focus.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves were filled with colorful yarns, and a hand-woven, baby blue coverlet blanket with little white flowers was on display. In the corner were some of Gilchrist’s square pot holders and scarves for sale.

“So this is the overshot pot holder,” she said. “A real pretty earthy green with a natural warp.”

The small shop is also Gilchrist’s space for creating.

In the center of the room are three wooden looms, and one table loom hanging on the wall. All of them are no bigger than a desk, and each held a different project. Several looms even sat, folded up in the corner.

When she steps on a treadle, or a peddle, a layer of the tightly strung yarn lifts up, which allows her to thread the colored yarn through. With enough threading she will create a tightly woven item, like a pot holder.

‘I Always Knew’

Gilchrist has been weaving as a hobby for almost two decades, but it only recently became her main source of income.

She grew up in Ohio with eight other siblings and not a lot of money. “I was the next to the youngest and I just always felt lost,” she said. “I was the little fat kid without a lot of friends, middle of nowhere living on a farm and I was pretty lonely.”

She made friends with a woman who was quadriplegic, although she had some use of her arms. This woman introduced Gilchrist to weaving.

“She had a big rug loom and she made rugs, and I sat next to her and I got introduced to weaving. I always knew someday I wanted to be a weaver; that just felt right to me.”

Jane Gilchrest works out of her shop in Stonewood, West Virginia. She recently opened the shop under the name, “Loomy Ladi Handwovens.”

It felt right because weaving is her happy place. Gilchrist said she finds the repetitive motion relaxing, but also stimulating.

“I don’t have time to think about what is or isn’t, the good or the bad, and dwell on things I can’t change and can’t control,” she said.

Later in life, she learned that weaving was a part of her family’s history. She has record that her great-great grandfather used weaving as a source of income during the long, cold West Virginia winters.

Weaving was vital in the early settler days in Appalachia, Gilchrist said, adding that it helped create cloth for clothing and blankets – items that were not yet available in the rural region.

But as clothing became more available during the Industrial Revolution, weaving became a lost art.

“It went from being an essential, ‘you have to do this,’ to being a hobby,” she said.

Gilchrist does her part to help keep an Appalachian tradition alive.

“When I sit down at one of those looms and I start creating a piece of cloth, I feel connected to my ancestors. I feel connected to the people that have come before,” she said.

Over the years Gilchrist has become a reputable weaver. She is part of the Tamarack Foundation, an organization for professional artists that is not easy to get into.

She sells some of her products, like the pot holders, through Tamarack.

She also has her master’s in education, so she has developed several weaving tutorials for classroom settings. In fact, about 60 percent of her income is from teaching weaving.

‘Mug Ruggin’ It’

But her biggest claim to fame is something she calls “Mug Ruggin’ It.”

It is a hand-woven rug for one’s coffee mug. Jane teaches “Mug Ruggin It” as an informal class at several West Virginian art festivals and fairs, where people can weave the rugs themselves. It’s a spinoff of a traditional Appalachian rag rug, just downsized.

Over the past five years, about 3,000 people have been through the “Mug Ruggin It” program, Gilchrist estimates.

Jane dying fabric with natural indigo dye. She tries to die her fabrics and threads whenever she can to keep her weaving as traditional as possible.

“I hope when I’m old and decrepit, and I’m walking through a craft show or flea market and I see somebody who’s got their wares for sale and I say, ‘Where’d you learn to weave?’ And they say, ‘Oh, well I went to the Vandalia festival and there were these people who set up these looms. I did this thing called ‘Mug Ruggin’ it’ and I fell in love with weaving.'”

Gilchrist keeps her weaving as traditional as possible. She has even learned to dye her own yarn, as well as spin her own wool – which she has dedicated a decent amount of her living space to. She has a yarn dying station setup near the laundry room, a wool spinner near the T.V. and another loom in the corner.

Some people might caution turning a hobby into a livelihood, but Gilchrist says it’s not work for her. She says she knows she will never get rich off it either, but that’s OK.

“But if I can make the world more creative, and they understand our heritage as we get further and further away from those days, and if I can share that, I think I’ll have done something pretty successful.”

This story is part of an episode of Inside Appalachia that explores traditional folkways. To listen to the full episode click here.

Making Rosettes Around the Holidays

Around the holidays, homemade treats are everywhere — whether it be Christmas cookies, gingerbread houses or fruit cakes. One Swiss holiday tradition involves making Rosettes — light, crispy, deep-fried pastries made using a floral-shaped iron mold.

Head chef at Lost Creek Farms, Mike Costello, recently inherited a rosette iron from his Helvetian ancestors. He shared the process of making the pastries with West Virginia Public Broadcasting

“I’ve heard a lot of people refer to it as a lighter version of a funnel cake,” Costello said. “A little bit crispier, lighter —these rosettes are pretty delicate when you pull them out of the oil. They look like they might be more robust, but that’s because the fins of the iron are kind of hollow. I’s a really kind of delicate pastry.”

Mike Costello at his farm in Lost Creek. He recently inherited a traditional Swiss rosette iron.

The rosette iron is similar to a branding iron, although much more delicate. The base is metal, floral shaped — it’s the part that is actually dipped into the batter and oil. The handle sticks vertically out of the cookie cutter-like mold.

Costello said the rosette can be traced back to many different immigrant cultures.

“I think rosettes were pretty common, especially in this part of Appalachia because you had so many immigrants coming not just from Switzerland, but Austria and Hungary, and also other places that you see rosette tradition show up around the holidays,” he said.

Costello’s rosette iron was gifted to him last Christmas. It likely was passed down from his Swiss great-grandmother, Flora. She immigrated to Helvetia when she was six years old.

“I got really exicted, probably more excited than I should have been about this little metal floral shaped thing with a red handle.” Costello said. “To me it was much more than a tool, it was a piece of my past I’d been longing for. I knew there was this piece of my family’s history that was up in the mountains of Helvetia, and suddenly I have something tangible from that.”

Flora is somewhat of a mystery woman to Costello, as she passed away before her history could be fully documented.

Pictures of Costello’s family that lived in Helvetia, including his great-grandmother Flora (photos on right). It is likely the rosette iron came from Flora.

But in photos, one can see Flora standing with her cows, chickens and field crops. One thing Costello knows is Flora was an excellent farmer and cook.

“To have this piece of our heritage that if there was someone you could point to and say, ‘Who’s doing the farm-to-table the real deal way?’ Before it was cool, Flora was doing farm to table in Braxton County, West Virginia,” he said.

Using the rosette iron passed down to him, Costello can make the pastries that perhaps Flora once made.

Costello follows a traditional Helvetian recipe that makes around 50 rosettes; however, he typically halves it for smaller gatherings.

For the batter, Costello cracks three eggs and adds half-a-pint of half and half.

“You want to get the eggs and the cream pretty well beaten together,” he said. “Then I add about one cup of flour.”

He lightly whisks the ingredients together.

“What we’re looking for is for the batter to be pretty light,’ he said.

The batter should be smooth and light, more like a pancake batter than a cake batter. If not, one can add a little extra cream.

After mixing, Costello adds one secret ingredient.

“A little bourbon, just a little splash into the batter,” he said. “I honestly don’t know if I’ve noticed much of a difference. But it’s kind of fun to carry on. I’ve heard some folks say it makes it a little crispier. I’ll take it.”

Costello dips the rosette iron in the hot lard. It is important to keep the iron hot so the batter will slide of easily.

He then heats up lard in a skillet. Costello said you want the oil about the depth of the flower base on the iron.

“I’ve got my iron in this hot lard and I dip it in this batter and you can hear it adhere to the iron,” he said. “I’m trying to avoid it coming up over the iron so when I put it in , it slides right off like that.”

And in about 10 seconds the first rosette is completed.

The end result is a golden, crisp, airy pastry in the shape of a flower. It has eight petals that are hollow, which adds to the delicate intricacy of the finished pastry.

“You know when you get it right because you can hear the sizzle of the batter. That’s when you know it’s really sticking to it pretty well,” he said.

The process reminds Costello of making Christmas cookies as a kid. Although he never met his great-grandmother Flora, he spent many holidays in his grandmother Betty Williams’ kitchen.

“She had a little step stool that my brother and I would get on because we couldn’t reach the counter top. But, that’s a lot of what I think back to in terms of the holidays and tradition is being in that kitchen, and making those cookies, and wanting to keep that up in some way,” he said. “So now that she’s gone as well, this is kind of in a way satisfies that need to be a kid again in my grandma’s kitchen making cookies. It’s almost the same.”

In just a few minutes, there is a plate towering with dozens of rosettes.

“We’ve run out of room on the plate, and we still have a ton of batter left,” Costello said.

Rosettes are typically served sweet. So while they are still hot, Costello added several different sweet toppings.

The finished product. Rosettes are typically served sweet and can be garnished with various sugars.

“I’m gonna do a basic powdered sugar, and I’ll also do a cinnamon sugar mix,” he said. “I’ll have some with some sorghum, and one thing that goes pretty well with that sorghum is a little bit of this J.Q. Dickinson salt from the Charleston area.”

Costello actually grew the sorghum on his farm and hand pressed it into syrup. It adds an unexpected earthiness, while the salt marries all the flavors together.

The rosettes themselves are crispy and delicate, and the sweet topping simply melts in one’s mouth.

This story is part of Inside Appalachia’s holiday show which you can find here.