Two Women Who Convinced Me to Make My Own Bread

A few days later, I found an old recipe and a story about Sally Lunn. The story of Sally Lunn is told in many different ways, but legend has it that a woman named Solange Luyon went to Bath, England, in 1680 after escaping persecution in France. She worked in the kitchen making buttery brioche bread and was selling it in the streets, known in those days as Lilliput Alley. But Solange – who, due to her colleagues' unfamiliarity with French pronunciation, became known as Sally Lunn. It seems that customers were soon visiting the Lilliput Alley bakery specifically requesting the Sally Lunn bread, and today Sally’s bread has earned legendary status around the world.

Intrigued by Sally and her bread, I told my mom I was going to make some. My mom was not a bread baker but she encouraged me to try it even though she had never made it herself. I shall never forget when I pulled that successful loaf of bread from the oven. At 12 years old this felt like a big deal and I had done it all by myself. It made me feel proud, and maybe not courageous, but it was a beginning for me. I found joy in food and recipes and it planted a seed that changed my young life. From that day to this, I have learned much about making bread and found many years later how beneficial using sourdough cultures are to rise my bread. I make bread every week and I have a young 20-year-old woman who gave her life making bread for soldiers to thank for this. None of these foods I talk about are just food to me but rather stories and lessons that have been weaved into my life since I was young. Walking in the footsteps of those who had gone before me, I found guidance that felt like little bread crumbs to follow, leading me to the life I have now.

It's not the bread, it's what we've done to the bread.

Much is being said about how bad bread is for you, but for generations it has sustained many. This led me to discover that it was never the bread, but rather what we have done to the bread that is causing harm to so many individuals. Our modern-day wheat is loaded with chemicals and has been genetically modified. We now use different kinds of yeast to rise our bread instead of bacteria cultures which change the structure of the bread itself - not to mention what has happened to our guts that are largely devoid of the bacteria they need to help us process our food. We have lost our way in all of this and blamed the bread when the bread is just a symptom or sign that we need to rethink all we are doing and eating. I have written another blog about this in more detail, Can Sourdough Change the Gluten-Free Diet, but I hope this will enlighten you and allow you to begin looking at your life and your food differently. We have a contract in this life with food and there are signs all around us, lessons to be learned, and delicious food to make, eat, and treasure.

I recreated Sally Lunn's bread and made them into rolls and wanted to share the recipe with you. These are special sourdough rolls I make for family and company. The process I use is a little different from other recipes since I use a sourdough culture. During Sally's era, there were no instant yeasts, they only used cultures to rise the bread. All the recipes using her name use instant yeast so I made my own version. Instant yeasts are hard on you and sourdough's slow rise culture is the way to go. I'm sure Sally would agree!  The slower and longer rise allows the bread to be infused with even more good bacteria, making the bread become more digestible and delicious. I hope you enjoy it and will never look at making bread the same way again because you never know when it could change a life.

“I have come to believe that food is history of the deepest kind. Everything we eat tells a tale of ingenuity and creation, domination and injustice-and does so more vividly than any other artifact, any other medium.” From the book, Sourdough by Robin Sloan