WHAT IS SOURDOUGH?
Sourdough bread is a type of leavened bread that uses a “starter,” “mother,” or “culture,” as a leavening agent (Tamony 1973, 266).
A basic sourdough starter is a mixture of flour and water that is left in the open air to ferment. During this process, the flour and water mixture interacts with oxygen and airborne yeast spores, or wild yeast, which “eventually bubbles into a foamy brew” (Harris 2003, 76). Before the invention of commercial yeast in the late 17th century, leavened bread was sourdough bread (Harris 2003, 77).
One way that folklore can be analyzed is through conservative, or static, and dynamic, or changing, elements (Sims and Stephens 2011, 81). In the text of sourdough bread, ingredients such as flour, water, and a starter, could be considered conservative elements. Another element of variation is the place in which the bread is made, because “yeasts particular to a given region’s atmosphere enter the mix during fermentation” (Harris 2003, 78). Thus, within the San Francisco sourdough tradition, wild yeast would be a conservative element. However, in analyzing sourdough traditions from different regions, wild yeast would be a dynamic element. Other dynamic features of sourdough bread include the addition of ingredients to the sourdough starter such as salt, sugar, commercial yeast, shortening, and more (Harris 2003, 76-77; White 1956, 93).