A Little Sourdough History
The thing that is sourdough, i.e. a naturally fermented leavener, obviously goes back to virtual pre-history…10,000 years at least. My interest at the moment, though, is in that specific version of the natural leavener that we North Americans call “sourdough”. For indeed “sourdough” is a term that’s specific to North America, no other bread baking culture uses it. A thing that we might refer to at home as “sourdough” a Brit might call “barm” a Frenchman “levain”, a Belgian “desem”, an Italian “lievito” and so on.
“Sourdough” is a term that came into common use only after the San Francisco bay area was settled and bakers began baking bread there. For indeed San Francicso’s naturally leavened bread is some of, if not the sourest bread in the world. No wonder that people who visited San Francisco and tried it began referring to it as such. And did they ever enjoy it. So much so that not unlike today’s visitors to San Francisco, they sought to take a little of the local seed culture with them when they left. This was especially true of the gold prospectors that flooded the area beginning in 1848. So popular was sourdough among them that the term “sourdough” soon became interchangeable with “prospector” (in fact I heard it used that way in a movie not long ago, a Jimmy Stewart classic called Bend of the River…Shut your yap, sourdough!).
The folklore around precious sourdough starters is extensive. There are stories of settlers keeping starters in little leather pouches around their necks, even sleeping with them to protect them against the cold. I don’t know if any of that’s true or not but it makes for a good story. As for how the starter was used, it varied. Some settlers (or their wives and family) surely did make bread out of it. The majority, however, very likely subsisted on flapjacks since they were a lot easier to prepare out in the wilderness (just ask any camper). That may be why sourdough pancakes, much more so than sourdough breads, are synonymous with the north woods, from the Washington coast to the Yukon, all the way east to Minnesota’s Iron Range.
Of course not all of the starters used over such a wide range tasted like real San Francisco sourdough. The term however spread, such that most of us in North American now call just about anything made with a naturally-fermented starter “sourdough”. It’s an inexact term that drives some stuffy Euro-style bakers nuts (that’s a DESEM bread!!!). To me that’s just a bonus.