happy laura ingalls wilder's birthday
Tonight I made whole wheat rolls in honor of Laura's birthday. It's not that I didn't want to make gingerbread or celebrate by having graham crackers with chocolate frosting inside, I just wanted to make rolls.

I guess because of our recent return to winter weather, I've been thinking about the hard winter and things like sour dough biscuits. I have some sourdough starter descendant from the '70s (the 1870s!) and both seed wheat and whole wheat flour in the freezer. I started thinking about grinding some of the wheat in my coffee grinder and making biscuits - honest to goodness "Little House" late-in-the-hard-winter biscuits. So I moved the starter to the refrigerator a few days ago in anticipation of today.

I spent some time looking at sour dough bread/biscuit recipes the other day. Some of them actually call for milk, but that's not the way Caroline Ingalls explained it. Sour dough starter was the substitute for sour milk, and biscuits contain lard or butter or some other fat, which the Ingallses didn't have all winter. All the recipes I see for biscuits also call for baking powder, even the one in the "Little House" Cookbook. Did Ma have baking powder throughout the hard winter? After the trains got through, she was thankful for "cream of tartar and plenty of saleratus," so apparently not. Saleratus is sodium or potassium bicarbonate (i.e. baking soda), and baking powder is pretty much the same as two parts cream of tartar and one part baking soda.

So whatever Ma ended up calling what she made: biscuits or brown bread, they weren't biscuits, but bread. "We don't need yeast or milk to make good bread," Ma says in The Long Winter, Chapter 19, "Where There's a Will." Then again, late in the hard winter, Ma is adding baking soda to her starter; oh well. What I made tonight is the baked combination of 3 cups flour, 1/2 cup starter, 1-1/2 cups warm water, and a little salt. Without grease, it's pretty much the equivalent of whole wheat French bread, I'd say. I ground about 1 cup of flour from "seed wheat" and used commercial flour for the rest. It rose several hours and I cheated and greased the bowl. I made one round free-form loaf in a cast iron pan, and I greased that too.

I liked it, but my family has more modern tastes so I also made angel biscuits. These are guaranteed to rise, having both baking powder and yeast. The recipe also calls for milk, butter, and sugar. I will try not to mention "Little House" food until Almanzo's birthday, when I will make stacked pancakes, and tuck them under a blanket cake.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:41 AM