Miners and Sourdough

A miner with a claim would find himself in remote areas for potentially months at a time. He would need to pack in all his supplies and cook his own food. While most miners were able to forage and hunt for food, one of the most stable types of sustenance was bread. Bread was relatively easy to make, used very few ingredients, was filling, and could be baked over the fire in the miner’s gold pan. Miners earned the nickname “Sourdough” because of this last fact.

It is believed that a version of sourdough was made over 3000 years ago in ancient Egypt, but it was French families, like the Boudins of Boudin Sourdough Bakery, who brought sourdough bread to San Francisco during the Gold Rush in 1849. As the Gold Rush spread north, miners and settlers brought the bread recipe to BC, often carrying the coveted sourdough starter in a pouch around their necks to keep it warm so the culture was ready for use.

Today, bakers use a commercial baker’s yeast to leaven bread, even when making a sourdough. It gives bread the smell we are all so familiar with, and produces a light, fluffy bread with a quick rise in two hours or so. Traditional sourdough bread depends on a culture of wild, or naturally occurring yeasts, and lactic acid bacteria (or lactobacillus) found in wheat flour to create a starter that makes the bread rise. The lactobacillus found in sourdough starter is similar to the culture found in yoghurt or kombucha and has the same beneficial health properties. The lactic acid that is produced is a natural preservative and helps to keep the bread from drying out as quickly as other breads made without preservatives. Sourdough starters were guarded carefully and passed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years. Even today, some bakeries, like the Boudin Bakery in San Francisco, boast using a starter that contains some of the original batch.

There are only three basic ingredients in sourdough bread: flour, water, and salt. This makes it an inexpensive bread to make, and one for which the ingredients were easy to obtain. In the 1800s, sourdough bread was often made from a rye flour, in contrast to the white flour often used today. The resulting bread was hearty and filling, with the characteristic sour taste.

While the bread was tasty and filling, making it took time. Cultivating the yeasts and bacteria in the initial starter takes a week, and then the starter has to be maintained, meaning fed with flour and water, every week to keep the culture active. Mixing the dough is a simple process of adding some of the starter to flour and water and a bit of salt, but the rising time takes between six and twelve hours. Once baked though, the taste is incomparable, the crust is crispy, and the centre of the bread is soft, and soaks up a bit of melted butter, making a delectable meal.