Oh, The Dedication!

We love salt rising bread. The first time I tasted it, I did not love it. I thought it was downright stinky and gross. Vince worked with a guy who heard I was going to Paducah, KY and there’s a bakery there that sometimes has salt rising bread. I had never heard of it. Vince knew what it was and, of course, they both wanted me to bring back salt rising bread. I’m not sure when it grew on me and I started to like it and learned to make it. I’ve always made the version that starts out with potatoes as part of the first starter.

I saw that King Arthur has a “Classic American Salt Rising Bread” and it doesn’t seem quite as difficult to make as the one with the potatoes so I thought I’d try that. I didn’t pay much attention to the timing and here I am at 11:40 p.m., just finished making the second starter which says “let rise 2 – 4 hours”. Hmm .. that’s going to be somewhere between about 1:40 a.m. and 3:40 a.m.

Starter

Here are the two starters combined and I’m thinking it looks pretty active. I believe I’ll (1) sleep in a room by myself so I hopefully will not wake Vince up (2) set my clock for about 3 a.m. and (3) knead this by hand so as not to wake Vince up with the mixer!

Wait . . I just read that it took 7 minutes to knead with his mixer. It will take an hour doing it by hand. I’m not sure my arm can hold out for that long. Oh well . . the price he’ll have to pay for his beloved salt rising bread. I’m going to use the mixer.

Definitely bad timing on my part! Next time, I’ll make the first start right before bed and let it sit overnight, then everything else will be done during the day.

So, I’ll sleep for 3 hours, get up, mix up the bread, go back to bed while it rises . . probably get it all mixed up and in the pan by 3:30 a.m. so I can sleep til at least 7. I’m betting there will be nap for me sometime on Saturday but there will also be a different variation of salt rising bread to try.