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Bread

Salt Rising Bread

A bread made by fermenting a salt and sugar mixture with flour, then baking until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Salt Rising Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the starter

  1. In a bowl, mix warm water, salt, and sugar until it reaches the thickness of pancake batter.

  2. Place the bowl in warm water and let it sit for 3 hours until bubbles form on the surface.

  3. Thicken the mixture with flour until it returns to its original thickness and let it sit for another 3 hours.

Make the dough

  1. Scald 1 pint of flour and let it cool, then mix it with the rising mixture and warm water to form a stiff dough.

  2. Knead the dough on a warm surface until smooth.

Rise and bake

  1. Place the dough in a baking pan and let it rise until it doubles in size.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and lets it hold its risen shape.
Warm water
Hydrates the flour and keeps the mixture warm enough for fermentation to start.
Sugar
Feeds the fermenting bacteria and adds a mild sweetness to the bread.

The step that matters

Keeping the starter warm during the 3-hour rests. Fermentation depends on steady warmth. If the mixture cools, bubbles form slowly or not at all, and the bread may fail to rise.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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