Without a recipe -- because there are any number of bread recipes called "Pioneer Bread" that include pre-ferments, starter, or even baker's yeast -- and from your brief description, it sounds like a type of naturally-leavened bread.

It also sounds like a type of bread commonly known as "Salt-Rising Bread" where the starter (usually consisting of potatoes, cornmeal, sugar, baking soda and boiling water) was fermented overnight and the rising action is provided by the liquid from the fermented mixture and the bread texture is almost like pound cake.

-Grainlady

My recipe came from Mother Earth magazine I believe:
8 T. corn meal
pinch salt
pinch soda
1 tsp. sugar
place in 1 pint screw cap jar, fill with scalding water & mix well, screw on lid
place 'starter' overnight in a warm place (I use my heating pad!)

Day 2
add 1 qt. milk to bowl, add 'starter' & 1/2 tsp. salt, flour to make stiff batter; cover & place covered bowl in pan of warm water (I set the pan on an elect. heat tray @ a setting I find to work best) 3-4 hrs.
let rise, punch down & add 1 tsp. salt, 3-4 T. shortening, flour & knead & make loaves in greased pans & keep warm (on heating pad for me) til double in size.
Bake 375/30-40 mins., remove x oven & butter crusts well.
Was just curious as to the way the dough would rise w/o the added yeast. The bread does resemble the yeast bread in texture but oh! .... I miss the yeast aroma & flavor! Guess this 'salt bread' was easier to make & kept better for the families traveling in the covered wagons?

Yes, that's very similar. When you add potatoes to the starter mixture it's pretty smelly stuff..... The reason it was called "Salt-Rising Bread" was because the starter was kept warm in a bed of warmed rock salt overnight on the back of a stove (see the link below), much like your heating pad. I've also used my Yogourmet yogurt maker to keep a low and steady temperature for fermentation of the starter.

It has also been noted by old-timers who made this bread, you should use cornmeal milled from the entire seed of corn so you get the germ as well as the bran and endosperm. Most cornmeal in the store is de-germed to increase shelf-life and keep the oil found in the germ from going rancid. BUT, all whole grains are covered with naturally-occurring yeast, which is what inoculates the mixture for a natural leavening from so-called "wild" yeast.

The "wild" yeast are really quite common and cover all vegetation. Starter is made from any number of things. The silvery coat on the inside of cabbage leaves and the outside of grapes are yeast, and are used to introduce "yeast" to a starter. Some starters are made with leaves from a peach tree. These are the source for yeast in starters, not the yeast in the air, where some recipes contend they come from. Yes, there are yeast in the air, but when it comes to a natural leavening, the source is primarily from the ingredients.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Wikipedia - Salt Rising Bread

Thanks so much for all your helpful information! Would the 'wild' yeasts give a different flavor to the bread? I may have mentioned this in the past on this site but my Iowa grandmother would only use a cracked pottery bowl to make her bread. She bought the cakes of fresh yeast.available back then in the store. Said it turned out better from it than any other bowl! Was told later that yeast probably lived in the cracks in that bowl after washing & contributed to the bread she preferred! She also saved vinegar 'mothers' to make more vinegar from fresh apple juice & stored excess eggs from her hens in a crock in the basement filled with 'water glass'! An uncle- who never touched a drop of alcohol- had this 'recipe' for his 'ice cream topping' that he had every evening. Well, he had to add a can of fruit cocktail to the container kept on the counter every once in a while ... he never figured I guess the bubbles in that container meant fermentation & alcohol! Oh how interesting so many of these old 'recipes' & ideas are!

Have to chec now my 3-rising bread dough I have on the heating pad! Grandma had the warming shelf on her huge castiron old wood burning cookstove for her dough... I'll stick with my heating pad.. whenever it isn't on my old aching back!!

Your helpfullness is appreciated so much!

As an example, San Francisco is famous for their sourdough (aka naturally-leavened bread) because it's a different strain of yeast than is found anywhere else - they even named the souring bacterium discovered in the unique-tasting sourdough starter - lactobacillus sanfrancisco. It's thought the unique microflora "has to do with the climate, humidity and proximity of the ocean". But if you were to bring home a starter from the Bay area, it will quickly adapt to the yeast in your flour and in your home. If you bake with baker's yeast a lot, it will reside in your kitchen and can influence your starter.

You are right about the cracked bowl harboring yeast that developed the flavor of your grandmother's bread. It's a little like "old dough" starter. You save back a wad of dough to use for leavening your bread the next time. An interesting process to be sure....

Three-rising bread dough is tricky these days. Back when flour was bromated, our bread dough had more extensibility than it does now without the bromates. With that many rises it can easily get over-proofed, but it sure adds a lot of flavor.

I guess the fermented fruit was a true "feel good" addition to ice cream ;-). I made that once a number of years ago.

There are so many health benefits from fermented food, and naturally-leavened bread is just one example of fermented food. It's too bad homemade fermented foods have gone out of style. I made Rejuvelac with rye (sprouted and fermented for 48-hours) this week because it helps your immune system fight cold and flu "bugs". I haven't made it for a long time, but cold and flu season seems to be a good time to renew my acquaintance with it. I think I'll try a batch of cabbage rejuvelac next.

-Grainlady