traditional leavening

[Okwes]

traditional leavening

Southwestern (US) Native peoples did use juniper ash
(an alkali) in cooking cornmeal cakes for coloring,
and it probably worked as leavening also.

Baking soda is alkaline; most baking powders contain
aluminum. The only non-aluminum baking powder I know
of is the Rumsford brand.

Early Euro settlers used hardwood ashes with water
slowly seeped through to make lye--a very strong
alkali. I'll bet it was bitter!

Ash and lye are used for turning dried corn into
hominy--it causes the skins to slip off and changes
the inside of the kernel chemically to make the
vitamins in it more accessible for people to digest.
This is why a diet very high in corn can cause
pellegra, if corn is untreated and is the main food in
the diet. Peoples who make hominy from their corn
don't seem to get that deficiency disease.

[Okwes]

Wethe Peoples had and still have about 101 ways to use juniper
not just in cooking not to speak of the many, many ways that its used in teas.
also as eye wash, and how to use the root differently from all the other part
like the berry to the bark

[Okwes]

Alice wrote:

> traditional leavening was I
> believe was ashes .... modern would be baking powder/soda.
> What is used to make the ashes?

AFAIK Natives didn't traditionally use leavening in baked goods.

Some southern tribes in the Caribbean and South America used yeast for brewing
but they didn't have grains with gluten in it to capture and hold the CO2, just
maize.

Colts foot and other ashes were used as flavourings and for their salt content
but that's another subject.

Now the European pioneers did use wood ashes for leavening. Ashes, preferably
from hardwood trees, were soaked in water, filtered and then the water
evaporated leaving an impure potash called pearlash or saleratus. It was quite
bitter and strongly basic. When it was mixed with an acid (sour milk or vinegar)

it released CO2 bubbles. Real baking powders were invented in the early 1800's.

In the early fur trading days Natives would have had access to baking powder
almost as soon as the Europeans. It was a common trade good along with flour.
Bannock has a long history among the Scottish and French traders, the Metis and
the Natives right up to the arctic.