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Sourdough is thought to be the oldest from of leavened bread.  Some think it was discovered as long ago as 4000 BC, when Egyptians accidentally left some dough out at room temperature and it picked up wild yeast from the air and began rising. Until commercially produced baking yeast became widely available in the mind to late 19th century, various forms of sourdough provided the primary method of leavening bread.

But mention sourdough today and most people think of gold rushes – prospectors in the California rush of 1849, the Klondike gold rush of 1898 and several that followed in Nome, Iditarod and Fairbanks, Alaska depended on their sourdough.  As long as they had their started and some flour, miners wouldn’t go hungry.  The treasured starters were passed from person to person, and some were even treated as family heirlooms and passed from generation to generation, especially in Alaska.

Sourdough works when its yeast, either wild organisms from the air or added commercial varieties, gives off carbon dioxide.  This gas creates tiny bubbles in the dough, causing it to rise.  The yeast feeds on sugar in the dough and converts it to lactic acid, the source of the sour flavor.  Different strains of yeast give the starters different flavors.  Perhaps the best known is the distinctively sours taste of San Francisco sourdough bread, which one bakery there claims to have been making from the same starter since 1849.  Sourdough started quickly made its way north to the Klondike and Alaska.

Bakers today enjoy using sourdough for the light texture and mild to strong sour flavor it gives baked goods.