Searching the web for salt rising bread again, not having done it recently, I was surprised to find a lot of good information. I am constantly surprised at how web content is growing exponentially. One site (linked below) was particularly rich in information. I won't try to even summarize it. But one author, who claims SRB is a conundrum, has largely removed conundrum by some extensive and smart experimentation. His experiments overthrow some of the main myths about making SRB. There is a page telling where SRB can be bought. Basically it is prevalent in the Appalachians and the Western New York (not Central NY, as she says) county where I grew up, plus a few other scattered places. I'm very familiar not only with all the NY towns where SRB is sold, but with some of the specific stores. So I can vouch for the accuracy of this information. The origin of SRB is more of a mystery than I thought. No one seems to know, other than it predates the availability of commercial yeast or baking powder. It requires no yeast and, since it is started from scratch each time, there is no need to maintain a starter. In fact, someone tried to keep a starter in order to maintain an especially good strain but failed. As one of the resident fermented food geeks, I found this extremely interesting reading. Jim Here is a link that might be useful: Salt Rising Bread Project

I don't make my own hummus, we have a grocer here (Wegman's) that makes great hummus so I buy theirs. I know Sabre makes a huge variety, but I don't think it would be hard to make your own, if you can get all the ingredients. Then you can add seasonings that you and your husband like. I like the avocado hummus and the spinach and artichoke hummus on my sandwich. Try some middle eastern or kosher markets, they should have some good stuff, too. They might have a good selection of low fat/low salt foods too, since heart disease and high blood pressure afflict all of us! I found some great low fat/low sodium hot dogs at the kosher grocer here in Baltimore. Good luck

This has been an interesting thread to follow, and I would have to say cooking is both an art and a science. In fact, I would say food at its best is a blend of art and science, after being a foods judge at fairs for many years. Leave the salt out of a bread recipe and see what you end up with? Bad science. Add the salt twice, an easy mistake, and see what you end up with? Bad science. Add the salt early and the gluten is harder to develop. Add the salt late in the gluten-development and it's easier to develop and won't require as much kneading. All science! The same goes for adding too much water, flour, sugar (or other sweetener); or flavoring ingredients which can affect the gluten-development in bread when you add too much - like cinnamon and nutmeg when added directly to the dough (this is why we sprinkle cinnamon/sugar on the dough surface for cinnamon rolls, rather than adding large amounts of cinnamon TO the dough. Add too much dairy and you'll end up with loaf with characteristics like - low-volume, poor symmetry, poor cellular structure and texture..... That's pure science. When people have a failed recipe, it's generally not from bad intentions or bad artistic interpretation, it's from bad science. Most modern baked goods are based on a ratio of ingredients. Stick to the common ratio whether you use a scale to weigh each ingredient, cups, pint canning jar, tea/coffee cup or mug... for your measuring tool-of-choice.... So take a moment to marvel at the science. "A standard plain cake has, by measure, 1/3 as much fat as sugar, 2/3 as much milk as sugar; and about 3 times as much flour as liquid." This ratio works whether you are making one small cake, one large cake, or enough batter for 100 cakes. Alter the ratio, such as trying to make a low-fat or low-sugar cake, or changing the type of flour used, and you will need to alter the known science with different ingredients and/or mixing methods. This science is most important when you develop recipes because you need to keep in mind ingredients that are tenderizers (fat and sugar) and those that are structure builders (flour and eggs), along with the other ingredients. Back to measuring flour for bread. This is one area that is completely without a standard for a scale or a dry measure, as all measurements for flour in a bread recipe are just a "good (or bad) guess". Add to that the way each person fills a cup with flour which will get you completely different amounts of flour if you were to weigh the amount on a scale, and the measuring cups themselves have NO standard in manufacturing. This is one area of baking where experience (art) along with science will help improve your bread. Due to the differences in the amount of gluten and moisture in flour, and those differences vary from brand-to-brand, season to season (moisture high during the rainy season and low during a dry winter) as well as from bag-to-bag of the same brand, you need to develop the "feel" (art) for bread dough. Your hands will "know" more about the dough than an exact measure. This is why you need to hold back 1/2-3/4 cup of flour during kneading. You may not need to add all the flour once it has the correct "feel" - and you may use all of the flour and require even more than the recipe called for..... It is also better to err on the side of a loose/wet dough than a hard/stiff dry dough. But I would also encourage EVERYONE to get a scale. There are lots more uses, along with measuring ingredients (especially if you find a recipe that is all weight measurements). It's the best tool in your kitchen when you MUST weigh something. It's far more accurate to measure 4-ounces of shredded cheese on a scale than it is to try to measure an equivalent in a cup - do you pack it tight/loose???? You can scale (weigh) the amount of batter in two cake pans to make sure you have an equal amount of batter in each of them so you have cake layers that are the same size. I even scale dough for burger and hot dog buns so I can adjust the size wanted/needed and make them consistently that same size, as well as the amount of bread per serving (a serving of bread is considered 1-oz.). When buns/rolls/loaves are the same size, they will bake more evenly. A reason to weigh the amount of salt is because of the size of the grains of different salt products. The finer the grind, the more salt grains there will be in a teaspoon (or whatever measure) because they will pack very closely together, while there will be less total salt when you put coarse-grinds of salt in the teaspoon because there are more voids of air between the larger chunks of salt. But the difference will probably not make a really huge difference in this bread recipe, but it IS a science factor you may want to keep in mind. And plenty of bread has successfully been made with plain old iodized table salt - even though I personally stopped using it many decades ago. So many things are choices, and neither totally right or totally wrong. -Grainlady

I made another loaf of rye bread yesterday and forgot to follow my recipe carefully. It's a recipe that I made up myself, and so it should not have been difficult, but in my recipe, I call for 2 Tbsp of dried onion flakes, but I also say that I can substitute 1/4 cup of minced fresh onion and reduce the water by 2 Tbsp. Well this time I used fresh onion and forgot to reduce the water, and I perhaps added too much onion, but that is not a bad thing, although it did throw off the proportions of liquid to flours. Anyway, I ended up adding more than 1/2 cup extra flour to the recipe, which I think made it too large for my Pullman pan. That was okay because I forgot to put the lid on the pan for the second rise, and in one hour, the dough was way over the top, and so I had to bake it without the lid. It came out okay except the it has a very light and airy texture, and I wanted it to be a bit more dense. I did remember the salt this time, but I forgot to reduce the salt, and I really should have because the Reuben sandwiches that I made today were way too salty. I blame the pastrami for this, but if I had left the salt out of the bread, the sandwiches would have been perfect. I think I will purposely leave it out next time and also pay attention to how much fresh onion I use. I liked the bread without the salt anyway. Another thing I noticed was that I need to use a lot more flour here than in the desert in proportion to the liquid. I think the flour in the desert has less moisture in it and therefore requires more liquid. This is going to be a balancing act for me. Anyway, I find it easy to add salt to bread that has been baked but it's impossible to remove it after it is done. I used turkey pastrami, since Kevin won't eat beef pastrami, and this may have had some influence.