Research By Silvana C. Fava

They took with them bread elaborated by the French Isodoro Boudin.

Boudin Bakery still bakes the bread using the same mother dough of those old days from a gold miner’s sourdough starter.

This bakery actually, sells 41 million pieces of bread per year all over the U.S.A.

Is the famous Sourdough bread which principal ingredients have 170 years old.

The Sourdough bread has the same basic dough than the one they used in 1849, following the same process of those years. It is preserved at a cold storage room protected against fire. Composed by a secret mix of leaven and bacterium, which has been fermenting since the Gold Rush. They maintain it alive renewing the water and flour.

The ferment and bacterium can live without term.

Only a bit of this dough allows you to make hundreds of pieces of bread.

Its taste is exactly the same that one of the bread that the miners consumed at the Gold Rush. It carries on growing and alive since then.

In 1906 there was a big earthquake and fire at San Francisco.

In the morning of April 18^th, at 5:00 am, Louis, the widow of Boudin, was opening the bakery. Suddenly, she was surprised by the fire. The bakery was burning and there was no water for extinguishing it because the tubs had been broken by the earthquake. (notes)

What she saved was very important. She confronted the fire for keeping a piece of Sourdough. She got it out and put it in a bucket and ran away.

What she rescued is a part of the history of San Francisco.

San Francisco got isolated and the eighty percent of the city was destroyed. 3 thousand people died. The Sourdough escaped from the fire and is still alive.

 Key value interpretation

By Alfredo Pupillo

I can suspect that identity is the heart of this story. And even may be the heart of the history of survivors across time and space.

Everybody since 1849, and still, today, perceived in this bread something unique and different to another one, but identic to itself for all this time.

Keep alive the identity across time and circumstances.

Face the fire and stay alive seems the price required to pay.

It seems that, in the same way, to build and develop a strong personal identity also requires to face time and circumstances

Identity makes it possible diversity and that is the root of communities and innovation.

Notes

      The earthquake was on April 18, 1906, at precisely 5:12 am.

Bibliography

Books

Dennis Evanosky and Eric J. Kos Lost San Francisco. Pavilion Books Group, 2.011

Web Sites

Boudin Bakery (boudinbakery.com/our-story)

Picture published with this article shows a piece of bread that is not the original of Boudin Bakery.