About baking bread

[Marthe48]

I mentioned last week that my daughters have become interested in making artisan sourdough bread. I got interested and put together a starter last night, using the ingredients I used when I first started making sourdough in the 90s. I'll probably bake a loaf tomorrow. The way I've always made starter is with flour, very little sugar, yeast and water. I let it sit out overnight, then put it in the fridge to slow down the yeast. I would use some of the starter weekly, and feed the remainder with flour and a little sugar.

I noticed that the recipes for sourdough starter online now use only flour and water, and then go through a process of discarding and feeding until the starter is fermented and usable. I thought that making a starter with just flour and water was used to make salt-rising bread. During Covid, I had searched for an online recipe for salt-rising bread. I have a 1940s era cookbook which had a recipe. I tried making s.r. bread in the 1970s, because my husband had eaten some when he was a kid and loved it. That recipe was flour and water, and it failed to start. I didn't want to use that recipe again, because of that early fail. At the time I tried again, there were very few references about s.r. bread, or recipes to follow. I ended up using the recipe in the cookbook, and about days after I mixed the flour and water, I cheated and added a little yeast. I made the bread, and it turned out different than either the sourdough and traditional bread I baked. I haven't tried again, because it was a difficult recipe.

I'm wondering now if sourdough made by the miners in early California used yeast or relied on natural fermentation? Until I looked at the recipes for artisan sourdough this morning, I really thought sourdough starter contained yeast.

Any thoughts?