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Bake Bread Like A Pioneer In Appalachia (With No Yeast)


Wondering what we’re doing featuring an NPR article on baking bread? Well, this isn’t just any bread, it’s salt rising bread, and there’s no yeast. Yes, really — the bread rises thanks to the bacteria in the potatoes or cornmeal and the flour that goes into the starter. And this unique Appalachian recipe yields a surprising taste: cheese.

The taste is as distinctive as the recipe. Salt rising bread is dense and white, with a fine crumb and cheese-like flavor.

“Indeed it is, when at its best, as if a delicately reared, unsweetened plain cake had had an affair with a Pont l’Eveque cheese,” wrote J.C. Furnas in The Americans: A Social History of the US, 1587-1914.

Read more on NPR

Photo by Susan Brown and Jenny Bardwell

Rebecca Haley-Park

Rebecca Haley-Park is culture's former editor and resident stinky cheese cheerleader. A native New Englander, she holds a BFA in creative writing from University of Maine at Farmington.

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