The sourdough tradition arrived to the northwest region of the United States and Canada during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898, as experienced miners often carried their starter with them.

I’ve been fortunate, while recovering sourdoughs for the Puratos Library, to visit bakers in places that have maintained strong sourdough traditions, like southern Italy, Greece, Mexico, China, Japan and California, USA.

My most recent trip was to Seattle, USA, and then up to Yukon in Canada. This is an area famous for its sourdough, particularly from the time of the Klondike gold rush. Sourdough bread played an important role in feeding miners at the time.

The Klondike gold rush started in 1896 when a boat arrived into the port of Seattle laden with two tons of gold. As the city was living through an economic crisis this event created a real buzz that quickly spread all over the world. In the end, about 100,000 gold seekers arrived in Seattle, but they hadn’t realised that the gold itself was to be found more than 3,000 kilometres to the north, in a place called Dawson City in the Yukon.

First Stop: Seattle

My curiosity was stimulated by a sourdough from Seattle that was registered on the Quest for Sourdough website. When I told the owner I was coming to visit him, I was surprised to find that he actually lived and worked on Bainbridge Island, a 30-minute ferry trip across the bay from Seattle city. The reason I noticed this particular sourdough was because it came from a pizzeria, and not just any pizzeria, but an award-winning one.

After learning the secrets of truly amazing sourdough-based pizza and picking up a sample of the starter for the library, my quest for sourdough took me up north to Skagway in Alaska. This was where the majority of stampeders arrived by boat from Seattle, and was the starting point of a long and arduous trip of roughly 700 kilometres to get to the gold mines, over land and up rivers. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to explore the region in a 4×4 vehicle and once I arrived I met my first real Sourdough—that was the name given to anyone who made it all the way up to Dawson City.

Ione Christensen is a real Sourdough and 85-years young; she is so full of energy and stories! She grew up in Dawson City, but later became the first female Mayor of Whitehorse, and is a former Senator of Yukon. But there is more; she also has a sourdough that’s more than 120-years-old that makes some rather delicious Belgian waffles—I truly felt at home!

Ione knows that the starter came with her great-grandfather around 1897 when he arrived in the region, but doesn’t know where he got the original starter. It was, she recalls, a vital lifeline for prospectors, quite literally, as the bitter climate conditions meant that much of the food they brought with them froze. Fortunately even excessive cold doesn’t affect a sourdough starter when it’s kept warm by body temperature, and it was always able to make bread when required.

The Ultimate Destination: Dawson City

The last leg of my Quest for Sourdough from the Klondike saw me travel from Whitehorse to Dawson City—a trip of over 500 kilometres—with Arianna Sikorski. She grew up in Alaska and knows everything you need to know about life in the outdoors, and she, too, had her own original sourdough. This particular one also dates from the end of the 19th-century, but has also travelled all over the world and been fed by numerous different flours. It’ll be interesting to see just what microorganisms our scientists find in there.

Watch a short film of my trip to the Yukon, along with films of other regions I’ve visited on my Facebook page, The Quest for Sourdough.

Why is Sourdough So Special?

When sourdough is used as a leavening agent, it gives bread a very distinctive taste, and depending on which sourdough you use, the result can be very different. This is because the taste and the flavour of sourdough depends on, among other things, the microorganisms present, and they vary around the world.

Of the 100,000 prospectors who started the journey to the Klondike in the 1890s, only 40,000 ever reached their destination. And it’s estimated only 300 of them made more than $15,000 in gold!