This is not a food thread, it is about history, culture, and coping with primitive conditions. I doubt that many board members have ever had any, or could get it if they wanted it. I found a few things on the Internet. but I'll bet none of you can find is how it got its name. It took me over twenty years to find out.

In the first place, remember that a hundred and fifty years ago, you had no place to buy yeast. You had to rely on airborne yeast, but could not afford to have batches of precious flour become unfit to eat if mould spores took over before any yeast arrived. The 49ers carried specimens of previous dough under their armpits to keep it warm. That made sourdough, which makes a good bread. But salt rising bread is much nicer. Some say the flavour suggests that of cheese. But it also has a very nice tender texture, and the crust is not rough on your gums like sourdough. Again though, you had to depend on airborne yeast. You had to have a starter mixture that would enable a suitable airborne yeast to grow rapidly. Tomorrow I will give a few more clues.

Apparently nobody so far knows about salt rising bread. The next clue is, do you know what a salt box house looks like, and how it got its name? A picture may be seen at"
http://www.mckieroth.com

Well, I think anyone who lives in a snow zone like I do will know exactly why the salt box house is called that.

They look exactly like the boxes we store, oh geez, I don't know what the English name is, well anyway, we call "du gros sel" (litteral translation...big salt).

It is the salt we put on the streets and anywhere where you want to melt the ice so as not to slip on it.

Dear belMarduk: Remember that in the early days you had to buy salt in bulk and it was not always available. When you got it, you had to protect it from moisture. So it was kept in a "saltbox" on a shelf above the kitchen stove.

in the early days you had to buy salt in bulk and it was not always available. When you got it, you had to protect it from moisture. So it was kept in a "saltbox" on a shelf above the kitchen stove.

Of course you mean table salt, Dr. Bill ? My Grandmother had a salt box where she stored table salt even when it was easy to purchase in stores ... a holdover from earlier times.
I've never seen a salt box to store "melting" salt. In nearby Portsmouth, on the river's edge, there are huge piles of salt - out in the open - for spreading on icy roads.

around here you can often find it in 55-gallon drums along the side of the road. :^)

i hate to say it, but i know all about salt rising bread.
1-- joy of cooking has a recipe for it.--at least the older editions did --

2-- as a science project in 8 grade, my son made salt rising bread.. it was a good demonstration of finding help full bacteria, by creating an environment that eleminated harmful bacteria..

3-- it is, to say the least, an aromatic process! but the bread taste good.

i used to bake all my own bread, so my kitchen has yeast spores about. i don't know if you'd be able for find yeast spores handy if there wasn't bread baking done on a regular basis.. but i could be wrong. most grapes have a "haze" on them, it is actually a varity of yeast that grows on the surface, making the fermenting of grapes rather easy.. i don't know what the yeast lives on when its not making bread.

Dear wow: surely you must have many times found that the top of your saltshaker had moist salt clooging the tip so no salt would come out. The same thing would happen to bulk kitchen salt, that's why it was kept in the saltboxes on the shelf above the kitchen stove.
Incidentally, when I mentioned the 49ers making sourdough, I forgot to note that they were for this reason often referred to as "sourdoughs". I am not sure what figure of speech that it.
My wife told me that when she was a girl, she could tell if any neighbor within half a mile was making saltrising bread. When the airborne yeast begins to work, it makes a gas with a very strong but not vile odor, not as pleasing as the odor of regular yeast. But even she did not know the secret, for which all the clues have now been given. It took me twenty years to find a book that mentioned it, so I would be surprised and even a bit chagrined if you could quickly figure it out.

dear bel-- in US, there are several salts-- salt for the street, is usually called "rock salt" but i like the name big salt..since rock salt is large (small pea --petit poi) sized crystals. it is almost never used for "consumption", but finds it way into "salt beds" for baking oysters, and in with the ice for making home made icecream. most commonly, it is used to melt ice on the street. Some of the new compounds, the are less caustic, and work at lower temputures, are simple referred to as "good" or the "the good stuff" rock salt, but these are not sodium chloride.

next down in size is Kosher salt, which is used for lots of things, ethnicaly, it is use by Jews in a koshering process, to remove all the blood from food, but it is also the salt used for salted pretzels, and other food. it is a very pure salt, and most pickles recipes call for kosher salt.

sea salt-- sold as a gourmet item, is the next size in salt. it is almost the same size as kosher salt, maybe a little finer, and is almost always served in a grinder, like a pepper grinder, to grind it to a finer consistanty. (and i confess, my personal preference)

finaly, table salt, both iodized, and plain. very fine crystals.

Dear of troy: I have no doubt that you know how to make it. But you did not say how it got its name. There are many airborne yeasts that will make bread rise.The one that makes salt rising bread has to have a starter with some ingredients that help it, but it further requires some warmth that other yeasts do not, and the saltbox would pick up and hold just the right amount of heat to permit the proper yeast to incubate.
So putting the culture into the salt box gave the bread its name.

according to Joy of Cooking, yes, the yeast does require more heat than most yeast-- we kept in the oven, where the oven pilot light kept the oven at 78 (f).

But the yeast is also extremely salt tolerant. Joy makes no mention of the starter being stored in a salt box.. we used glass jars. Joy pointed out that salt rising bread was a good way to get yeast when none could be purchased, and thought the bread developed out in the western parts of the US, where salt was a readily available.

but i would be interested to learn more.

i know this borders on being a food thread, but i see this as closer to biology-- since the whole basis of salt rising bread is a salt tolerent strain of yeast, and the idea that you can use high salt to kill off bad bacteria, and leave only the good one.

i am often impressed by how people, common people, used advanced science and chemistry, with no advanced knowledge.
i wonder how well i would do, with out all the technology i depend on.

What you call salt boxes, we in Zild have usually called salt cellars. Interesting, hmmmmm?

Dear of troy: remember the bread originated in very primitive kitchens where the salt box was the only place with some reaonable control of the incubating temperature.

What you call salt boxes, we in Zild have usually called salt cellars.

We have salt cellars, too, Max ... I have glass ones and fancy gold ceramic and even a pair in silver ones for the table on special occasions.
Salt cellars also come in pairs that are sometimes made as miniatures of other things -- people sometimes have collections of them -- Considered "collectables" there is everything imaginable from Mickey and Minnie Mouse and other cartoon characters to pairs of Moose to Hansel and Grettel,to bull and cows, to cars, to lobsters and I even saw a pair of frogs once! None more than about four or five inches tall.
The salt holder in these types of salt cellars has larger holes than the pepper shakers, or sometimes there are just more holes in the salt cellars than in the pepper. Makes for a surprise, sometimes, for the uninitiated!

Again at lunch I was annoyed by saltcellars having tops clogged by moisture, and this is a very dry place. They ought to make saltcellars with plastic caps to keep moisture out. I used to have some that had a very small rubber stopper in bottom that was opened by pressing a button on top. At least once a month I have to put salt on a plate and give it a short burst in the microwave to dry it while cap was washed and dried.
You didn't say how big the Zild saltcellars are, but the salt boxes had to be big enough to hold at least ten pounds of salt, to have room for a couple cups of yeast culture, and hold enough heat to do the job.

I was annoyed by saltcellars having tops clogged by moisture, and this is a very dry place.

To prevent that in humid weather, put some grains of rice in the salt. Real rice not the "minute" kind. The grains of rice are too big to get through the small holes that let salt sprinkle through.

Dear wow: putting the rice in with the salt will keep the salt in the bottom part drier, but the trouble is at the holes in the cap, where traces of salt pick up moisture even in this very dry place. We haven't had rain for over a month, and it may be a couple more months before we have any. If the cap were not metal, the salt cellars could be zapped in microwave once a week. But it is tricky putting any metal into the microwave. Leaving twistems on, and dishes with metallic glazes makes fireworks. The other thing is that putting something with very little moisture into microwave and giving more than a very short burst can hurt the microwave. I just had an idea. If the salt cellars had plastic caps with knobs on the inside that would just fit into the holes of the shaker, that would solve the problem. I don't like the metal caps. Inevitably you are ingesting cap metal corroded by the salt. Yuk. But I have to be careful not to criticise my daughter's table ware. Even my buying new ones that suit me would be implied criticism. And I could not hope to find ones pretty enough to please her.

I'm not sure about the usage of "salt cellar". I think a couple of you are confusing them with salt shakers. A salt shaker is what the word denotes -- a container, small in size if intended to be put on the table, but larger if used by the cook by the stove, closed, with holes in the top from which you shake out the salt. A salt cellar is like a little box with an open top, glass, ceramic, silver, etc. or a combination (my great aunt had a beautiful pair in ruby red cut glass in silver holders). They were about 2 inches square and not quite as deep, holding maybe an eighth of a cup of salt, and, as noted were a pair (cellars seem to come usually in pairs). You get the salt out of a salt cellar with a tiny round spoon holding less than a quarter teaspoon, which is placed in the salt when the salt cellar goes on the table.

And BTW, I have known about salt rising bread for years, from Beard on Bread the best source I know of on bread, by the late James Beard.

Post hidden for those with food thread phobia:

It is easy. Long ago, I moved over to salt grinders with sea salt to go with the black pepper grinder that I use all the time (much better than that horrid pre-ground white pepper that you were supposed to use in cruet sets. Just keep the antique stuff for display.

>I'm not sure about the usage of "salt cellar". I think a couple of you are confusing them with salt shakers.

Cambridge Dictionary:
A salt cellar (Am and Aus also saltshaker) is a small container for salt, usually with one hole in the top.
http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk

I suspect that it is just a matter of local usage, my family certainly used salt cellar for the thing with a hole in the top. Although, when I googled "salt cellar" and all the references that came up, even on UK sites, were to the kind of things that sit on a table and hold salt, you can either use your hands to get a "pinch" of salt for your food or use a tiny salt spoon. Even the British Museum site mentions salt shakers as different to salt cellars. From the items offered for sale I suspect that we are moving towards salt shaker gaining more universal usage.

If the salt cellars had plastic caps with knobs on the inside that would just fit into the holes of the shaker, that would solve the (moisture/clogging)problem.
Don't rush to patent it, Dr Bill. Many cafés (naff caffs) in Europe use salt cellars with a hinged plastic top that do precisely this.

To me, a salt cellar is a table item, either as a shaker, grinder, or spooner. In our family we also have salt jars or salt caddies which are kitchen items with larger amounts of salt.
Rod

Interesting-- i am sort of the middle of the road-- i use all the terms, and definately see a difference between all of them.
salt box- about the size of a small shoe box, made of wood, with a deeply slanted top.
nowdays, recycled to hold candles or something else.
salt cellar-- a small open dish, with a matching spoon, to serve salt-- my mother's were all fine china or crystal
salt shaker-- a small container, with 1 large hole(UK), or many small holes (US) for table use.
salt grinder-- Like Jo, i too, use sea salt, which comes in larger crystals, that i grind as needed. the grind mechanism is on the bottom, and resessed, so, just placing the grinder down, helps protect the salt.
Salt and pepper shakers--matching sets of shakers for both salt and pepper, some simple, utiliarian, some ornate, and collectors items.. tops usually have S and P patterned holes.

Don't rush to patent it, Dr Bill. Many cafés (naff caffs) in Europe use salt cellars with a hinged plastic top that do precisely this.
Hey, RodW maybe you could get together with Dr. Bill and arrange to send him one!?
Also, Dr. Bill, the shakers (!) for salt substitutes, like Mrs. Dash herb mixes (salt-substitutes) have a plastic cap that can be removed for measuring out larger quantities. Perhaps one of those caps would fit your salt shaker.

of troy :
Enlightening definitions.That said, I have some crystal salt dishes with a spoon - what is defined in the list as a table salt cellar. Now I know the proper name! Cellar not dish.

It well may be - as jmh said - that the confusion, in part, is due to local usage. I hear both cellar and shaker used interchangeably here in New England.
I will try to be a good girl and use the correct terms from now on while staunchly resisting the temptation to correct my friends!

while we are on the subject of salt--
is the expression "above the salt" still used? I have read it, but i have never heard it, or used it
it came from when Salt cellars or Salters where elabrate, ornate and large (dishes? containers?), and one's social status was defined by how close (or how far) one was seated from the salt.

the same sort of snobbery is why many fancy dinners will have individual or semi individual S & P shakers for each guest. that way no on had to ask for the salt-- (and betray they were "too far" from it) My mother didn't have one salt celler, she had 4--each with two spoons, place between 2 place settings. -- and i bet other on the board have sets of fancy S & P, not just 2, but 4 or 8.

is the expression "above the salt" still used?

Funnily enough I heard it used recently when someone was describing a rather snobbish lady (a la Hyacinth Bucket, oops Bouquet.) The person said "She thinks herself quite above the salt."

Regarding salt superstitions : I was taught that when someone asked for the salt (shaker) to be passed to them, one should lift it and replace it where the other person could easily pick it up. (this repeated by other people if a long table, ok) the reasoning being that it brought ill luck to take salt from the hand of another person. "Take salt, take sorrow" the exact superstition words.
Anyone else hear this?
Any ideas why?

Dear wow: I have never heard of this superstion, and it was not in a long list I found on the Internet. But I suspect that some observant hostess long ago noticed some slob offering a fastidious lady a dirty palm with salt on it, and on the spot invented the superstition to protect both parties.

I thought that not handing salt directly to another person was a "southern" thing, since I learned it from my Louisiana born, Texas reared grandmother, and practice it, as does my family, religiously. As my grandmother used to say, " I'm not superstitious, I just believe in being careful!"

Hi, what do you do for a living?

I'm a salt salesman.

Hey, I'm a salt seller too. Shake!

----------------------

Something that I didn't know until relatively recently is that in the South when one is asked for salt one is expected to provide both the salt and the shaker. Us Northerners apparently feel that if you want the damned pepper you will ASK for it!

But I can't confirm the thing about putting the salt down rather than handing it directly to the person who is asking. Peggy, raised into righteous Southern womanhood, just hands the two containers to you.

TEd

"I'm a salt seller too. "
I remember seeing a splendid documentary on TV a long time ago, which showed an enterprising ? Ethiopian
in the Rift Valley, with a rickety wagon pulled by a donkey, gathering salt from an outcrop in the suburbs of Hell, which he would then have to haul many miles before he could peddle it.
It is hard for us to imagine how much you can miss salt when you are long deprived of it. I remember an article in Scientific American long ago which attributed much of the inertia of the Dark Ages in Europe to the destruction of salt beds in France by their being uplifted geologically. Another article mentioned that a very large part of the pines on Cape Cod were cut for heat to evaporate sea water, when there was an unusual demand for salt in the 1820s. Remember Lear's daughter proving to him that her comparing him to salt was not faint praise. I still find it hard to grasp that salt could ever have been so expensive that only the bigshots had access to it at formal banquets. And let us rejoice that cretinism from lack of iodine need never afflict kids.
Lots more salt trivia out there.........

well, there are plenty of idioms and superstitions..

like "salt of the earth" to define a good person (some one valuable to have around?)

or "take things with a pinch of salt" (just as salt improves flavor, you should improve your outlook?)

(or are there better defination/ different understanding of the idioms?)

or that spilling salt is bad luck, and if you do spill it, you have to gather up a pinch of it, and throw it over your left shoulder to rid your self of the bad luck.

any others?

worth his salt (from salary paid to roman soldiers, in salt; hence "salary"?)

Plus sitting under the salt, discussed above.

a salty expression, salty language (synecdoche)

Dear maverick: I wish you had taken a shot at the etymology of "salty" expressions. An obvious possibility is associating "salty" with sailors, who have a longstanding reputation for ribaldry.

P.S. There a great many fascinating URLs about desalinization of water, so many I leave it to you to find them. If you can't, PM me.

Bill, you still haven't explained the salt rising bread.

I thought I had you when I remembered a cookbook dating from 1891 in my library (the type that starts explaining how you make turtle soup by the words "catch a medium sized turtle, make sure you hang it by the hind feet before cutting off head so it will drain properly...)

Well there were a few recipes to make yeast involving salt (and potatoes) but no salt rising bread. Curioser and curioser.

Saltbox A saltbox is nearly chest-high in the back and mid-thigh in the front and it looks like the house Bill showed us. In rural areas you can find this on some street corners with a shovel inside so people can spread salt if they see the need. You rarely see them in urban areas anymore as all the salt spreading is very well timed.

I have never heard the name salt cellar. A celler is generally an underground storage area for food or wine. It may be under the house or only partly so. Often it will be called a 'cold room'.

"Take it with a grain of salt"

Jackie, my understanding of the phrase was that what you were hearing might not necessarily be the whole truth, and you might have to "season" it with additional facts, i.e., view it with some degree of skepticism. Anyone else?

lacking in veracity.

Max, what a charmingly indirect version of the earthier Anglo Saxon b___it.

it was of troy who offered this one

Oops ! Right you are, Max. My apologies to of troy and Jackie for not paying proper attention.

the earthier Anglo Saxon b___it

Hence the salty expression "Once b__itten, twice shi__"?

Bel, Re: Bill, you still haven't explained the salt rising bread.

Joy of Cooking does have a recipe for salt rising bread. and a complete set of instructions for making it. so rather than let this become a food thread, try looking there.
first, you need to find/cultivate a salt tolerent yeast. the yeast is cultured in a batter, similear to a sour dough, it is aromatic, to say the least. think of walking into a nice italian cheese store!

i don't know if it is in the current edition of joy, you might have to find an old one. my old joy (i have 2 copies) is circa 1970. and it has the almost the same recipe for turtle soup.

how much you can miss salt when you are long deprived of it
During the early days of the Biafran war, salt as an imported item was difficult to get hold of. We impressed onto our 8yr old servant the importance of salt for health "and because it makes everything taste better". He proudly announced he had managed to obtain some, and we were very pleased until we tasted the coffee!
Rod

Dr Bill -

I love salt rising bread; it makes the best toast. You can still find it at bakeries and grocery stores hereabouts.

I had always wondered at the origin of the name. Thanks so much!